A thought: The slightest design flaw or manufacturing flaw in a microprocessor or memory chip can reduce its value to zero. Generally, flaws in software are easier to correct and don't have the same catastrophic effect on value.
With respect to quality, some software is so fundamental and widely used that flaws are noticed immediately and fixed. Examples include microcode, firmware, operating system kernels, compilers, and embedded databases such as SQLite. Flaws in low-level software are generally much more destructive to value than flaws in high-level application software.
