It reminds me of a story I read
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| pben Sep 18, 2004 7:35 AM EDT |
I read a article once that no small TV sold since the 70's has covered it's cost to make. TV making left the USA because there was zero profit in it. The story of consumer electronics is chasing the NEW thing because it is the only thing that can make the margins to cover the commodity stuff. So now PC are going the way of the rest of consumer electronics. It is good news for Linux unless Wintel pulls off a new platform that they can charge more for and some how lock out Linux. |
| tzafrir Sep 18, 2004 9:38 AM EDT |
Maybe indeed we will go to proprietary platforms, and maybe we won't. Like the author, I don't have a crystal ball. However the article does not base its predictions on reasonable arguments. He ignores the fact that most of the proprietary platforms of the 80-s have failed. The Macintosh was very close to total failure, and still holds a relatively little market share. Apple has since abandoned its proprietary bus and moved to PCI and other standards from the PC arena. Thus the same extension cards can be used on both macs and PCs. Furthermore, almost all of the proprietary workstation platforms that were common in the 80-s have disappeared near the end of the 90-s. Only Sun and IBM remain in that sector, and mostly for servers. He also has this silly claim that Compaq was so successful because it used IBM's R&D. Well, its been almost 20 years since IBM was *the* major player in the PC market. Compaq has since done much of its own R&D. E.g.: the EISA bus. |
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