The popularity of the blessed curse of the PC industry, the netbooks, just keeps on rising. DisplaySearch has published it latest quarterly report on the state of the notebook market, and conclude that netbook popularity is rising, but at the cost of revenues.
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Member since:2009-08-18
"Beautiful. Spot on. Suppliers need to supply whatever people want and need, and not whatever would make suppliers a fatter profit."
Sometimes the public doesn't know what it needs until you give it to them. A good example of this is multitouch.
Without it, I was very content. With it, I'm even more so. But to get multi-touch, it require some research and development.... something that is difficult to fund when you're at a constant race towards the bottom profit-wise.
Multi-touch may not be the most ideal example because it's development wasn't designed for a single company's specific product. but you get the idea.
Companies making profits... even large, or even gigantic ones are not a bad thing.
If that company applies some of those profits to increased R&D, then things only get better.
Edited 2009-10-09 20:27 UTC
Member since:2007-02-17
If that company applies some of those profits to increased R&D, then things only get better.
This is indeed normally the case.
However, when a situation arises that a company's R&D effort is all directed at: eliminating competition; making it impossible for cheaper & better products to get a foothold in the market; trying to make it illegal for competitors to offer cheaper new alternative products; squeezing more money out of people for functionality they need that the company had ALREADY recouped the R&D investment for by bundling in extras that people don't need and which only make their machines slower, requiring them to get new machines ...
when all that starts to happen then things only get worse.
http://slashdot.org/story/09/10/09/215235/Microsoft-Moves-To-Patent...
http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/10/10/0124227/Open-Source-Could-H...
Edited 2009-10-11 08:13 UTC
Member since:
2007-02-17
Think horse carriages. When cars became the prevailant form of transport, the owners of horse carriages were screaming - of course. But who cares? Like nobody? - There is three options for PC makers:
1) Stop making PCs, get a new hobby altogether instead.
2) Stop making PCs, make netbooks and other more fashionable items instead.
3) Keep making PCs in such a way that people are still interested in buying them.
Hey wait, did I just sum up the workings of a free market in three easy to remember bullet points? Some PC makers defo need to read Osnews forums more often!
Beautiful. Spot on. Suppliers need to supply whatever people want and need, and not whatever would make suppliers a fatter profit.
Now if we could only get people apply this same sensible thinking to the OS and application software as well.
Edited 2009-10-09 10:19 UTC