It's going to be amazing when you can buy a usable tablet for $20 at at the dollar store - or maybe even a vending machine.
I remember when desktop calculators were more than that.
Don't we have Google to thank for this in large part?
Hardware is dead
21–30 of 155 posts
Re: Hardware is dead
#22"At these levels there is almost no profit margin left in the hardware business. A $45 tablet is cheap enough to be an impulse purchase at the check-out line in Best Buy. A $45 price puts tablets within reach of a whole host of other activities not traditionally associated with computers. Tablets could be used by waiters in restaurants."
I've been to plenty of restaurants where waiters having been using handheld, wireless devices to take orders, so that's nothing new. And claiming that a rapid price drop means there's "almost no profit margin" and then equating that to the death of hardware seems completely upside down.
If hardware manufacturing has dropped to the point where complex devices are cheap to buy then we are entering a golden age of hardware since it means that manufacturing and design process has got cheap enough that many things that were previously too expensive to design/manufacture will be made.
It can also herald an era of 'mom and pop' hardware companies.
Re: Hardware is dead
#23Here's a link for anyone who feels like exploring the wonderful world of cheap generic Chinese tablets:
http://www.dealextreme.com/c/tablets-1409
Or cheap generic Chinese anything, for that matter.
Re: Hardware is dead
#24I never understood why good articles have tiny non-descriptive titles, like the author got tired. Certainly it's not for lack of space, it is the web after all and not a print newspaper. If you have a 20+ paragraph story, at least give us some motivation to read it. At least put a subtitle or appositive clause on the title.
Titles are hard. Usually nothing great comes to mind so you just settle. What title would you use?
I am surprised they didn't fall back on the mainstay, "Hardware is dead. Long live hardware!"
Re: Hardware is dead
#25Hardware is dead; long live hardware. The free-fall in PC prices in the 90s "killed" the PC, except that every major PC manufacturer still sells high-end models, and retailers still make money on them. The free-fall in automotive prices in the 20s "killed" the automobile, except that people kept buying faster, sleeker, newer models anyway. Like so many other electronics and everyday devices, the commoditization of ta…
Actually Intel's ultrabook rebranding was also a clever step to make laptops expensive/more profitable again, while they were in a free spiral fall due to (Taiwan's)Acer's netbooks. That said, hardware will only be dead if US companies give up on producing hardware, and it becomes commodity produced elsewhere, similar to clothing manufactured; only Apple will remain the Prada of hardware.
Re: Hardware is dead
#26It's called differentiation. If you don't have it, you're in a commodity market (Android anythings). If you do have it, you're not in a commodity market and generally hardware gross margins hover around 50% (or more!).
If you won't innovate and differentiate, then yes, hardware is dead. You won't make any money these days making something someone else makes cheaply. _MAKE_SOMETHING_ELSE!
Re: Hardware is dead
#27I've already started sticking them to the walls of my house to control lights, the thermostat, the garage door etc. This didn't make sense at $400/device but as soon as they hit $100 or so the game was afoot. Now they're so cheap, its literally cheaper to grab one from "the pile" and whip up a nice html5 interface for the task than to buy a dedicated Insteon controller or Nest thermostat. Hell, it was cheaper to auto…
What hardware are you using? I've wanted to try home automation for a while but all I can find is either the lowend stuff (X10) or the really highend stuff that requires a dealer to install it for you.
I don't think original parent did away with the hardware components.
X10, Insteon etc also sell software to manage their devices. That is not cheap. That s/w is probably what he replaced.
I did a small bit of home automation myself. I went with X10 (for low cost). I strongly suggest you do that too.
I set up an intrusion alarm system. I have multiple wireless (RF) door open and motion-detection sensors. I use a RF-to-USB X10 device to receive these signals on my Linux desktop.
My shell/Tcl scripts interpret this data and send email and (SMS via AT&T's email-to-sms gateway) if the alarm is triggered. They also turn on many lights and play an audio warning message, and turn on a webcam and start streaming the video to a remote server. :)
Since my house wiring is ancient, Insteon won't work in my house. For the same reason, ground-level sockets can be controlled by a plugged-in X10 controller, but not wall switches.
Re: Hardware is dead
#28As a alleged kernel engineer I wonder what this means for me.
For now, I see it means that one person out of a dozen gets to write the device driver -- if that --and the rest of us get to do patch slavery. heh. :)
as far as linux, it is kind of sucked the air out of the room for embedded development, but I think in kind of a good way. I'm sort of out of an interesting systems job, and people who think they can write an app in user space for their device and be done with it are in for a shock when it doesn't go quite right, but with embedded linux people can just write an app in user space for their device and be done with it. Yes, you read that right.
Re: Hardware is dead
#29The 1st thing I was thinking about the $45 China quoted market price (which is probably lower since it doesn't include either volume or haggling) was the cost of shipping from China to the other markets. At the end of the article we see the price after shipping translate to $79, which adds approx 100% to the cost in-stores. I guess the next wave will involve ways of either making shipping and the process of importing cheaper, or just circumvent it all together with say 3d printing.
Re: Hardware is dead
#30The low end of every successful product category ever created eventually becomes a commodity. The author has equated the commoditization of low end tablets with the death of one of the worlds largest industries.
This would be like saying; margins are slim on spreadsheet software, the software industry is dead.
This article exudes a failure to grasp basic economics.