Ask HN: What are the signs a piece of technology will become commoditized?

1)Trade secrets, such as aluminum casting (if I recall correctly) for Musk and SpaceX, and Intel's tempering of memory chips in the early days.

2)Patents - when others can reverse engineer what you've done, you don't have the option of 1). Copyrights, somewhat similar and can be a part of tech products in the US (code, etc.)

3)Network effect/high cost of entry. (Most likely when monopoly and competition laws are poorly enforced, as is often true in new fields.) But disruption is a possibility.

4)Law/corruption. More common than thought. The EU thinks the US is simply ignoring antitrust laws re its large companies such as Google (anything free can count as bundling), for example. Interoperability isn't even on Facebook's radar. This can take a fairly soft form EU laws forbid wines from outside a given region being called by the famous name (such as "Champagne") and may soon forbid overseas data storage or passage too. Security laws in China, re tech products, will likely restrict foreign competition there in the long run. Amazon is being allowed to in effect enforce ebook prices of at least $3 with no action from the justice department, leveraging that policy to gain exclusive access to large numbers of books (if they want any free days.) Strictly illegal, but it's just not in the US interest to go after their own Hegemonic corporations. So ebook distribution, the most obvious of commodity services... turns out not to be a commodity at all, somehow given Justice department inaction.

There are other temporary causes, such as a shortage of workers with particular knowledge or skills (coders just now.) Well, here's hoping that's temporary.

Refusing to participate in a race to the bottom (in quality say, and taking a hit for a while) can also leave a company without obvious competition for a time.

I've left out cornered markets on minerals, not too likely at the moment.

One could also add patent pooling, which US automotive companies used both to save on research and raise the cost of entry, in the short run in order to create an oligopoly.

I must admit, I'm very fascinated with application management would actually be executed, from an academic / computer science angle.

I can also completely understand patenting from a business perspective, but I'm also curious as to what things have actually been (publicly) patented.

How is MAM different from MDM?

This is basically what is happening with the smartphone business. First Apple started it. Then there were a few players like LG, Samsung, HTC, etc. Now everything and their uncle is starting a smartphone company. Companies like Lenovo, video con, not to mention the Asian upstarts from China and India which are definitely late entrants to the market.

On the demand side: Steadily increasing users: Early adopters not abandoning the product, but continuing to use it. Increasing numbers of early adopters in various social circles.