

The Long Tail of Hardware - inmygarage
http://amandapeyton.com/blog/2013/10/the-long-tail-of-hardware/

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gaius
Her point 2 is interesting. It has long been to the great bafflement of
Westerners why Sony's software is so bad. You will know what I mean if you
ever tried to use Sonic Stage for your MP3s. And the reason is in the West we
expect(ed) to have the PC as the hub into which we would plug everything to
manage it. Whereas in Japan, your camera would just print directly to your
printer and that was that, so in their home market Sony never had to learn to
write software for PCs. Anyway, we might be seeing something similar happen
here too now.

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projct
I don't think that's the whole story, given that the software that runs on
their devices isn't much better...

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bcrescimanno
I don't have time to find the link right now; but, if you google around a bit,
you can find articles (one, I believe, from Cringely) that points out that
Sony's dominance in many areas was during an era of primarily mechanical
electronics. That's a very different skill set than computer hardware /
software based electronics. A skill set that, presumably, Sony never fully
developed.

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FigBug
I think hardware goes in phases. First there are 1 or 2 products that define
the category. Then it explodes into 100s of competing products, all with a
slightly different take. Then it matures and contracts back into a few.

Right now we are seeing diversity smart phones contracting -- I think we'll be
left with iPhone and Samsung. The majority of PC makers are struggling to
survive. Portable audio market was pretty much just the iPad. There is a short
window when margins are high enough for lots of experimentation and lots of
companies to survive.

I think the smart phone accessory market will explode for the next 2 - 4
years, a few key products will emerge and the rest will fade away. Consumers
can only handle the excitement for so long before they get tired keeping up
and just buy the status quo.

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lifeisstillgood
I think there is a vast world of difference between many different iPhone
speaker companies and the evolution of the Internet of things. Hardware's long
tail lives not in small run funky devices but in common cheap sensors to track
our everything and in power, ease and education coming together to allow
anyone to build their own devices for their own needs in a weekend DIY

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programminggeek
I think the long tail of hardware is becoming more viable just by virtue of
the fact that it is easier to presell and prepromote a product without risking
a large up front order. That changes the game in a lot of ways.

I'm not sure that demand has changed so much as the changing cost going to
market.

