Hardware is dead

[Chuckt]

Amazon is running ads on new Kindles because they aren't making any money selling them. Now you are forced to recon with something that is cheap and more powerful than many homebrew computers.

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. By mechanics in auto body shops. By every nurse in a hospital. By pretty much any category of work that today needs a computer but where PCs are too expensive to be deployed. These are also devices built entirely for commercial reasons, no government backing, no academic sponsor, no proof-of-concept.

I think this leads to an important conclusion: No one can make money selling hardware anymore. The only way to make money with hardware is to sell something else and get consumers to pay for the whole device and experience.

http://venturebeat.com/2012/09/15/hardware-is-dead/

[brad]

I think you might be right!

My kickstarter campaign seems to be a little bit like this

[Chuckt]

How much have you advertised?

[brad]

It's been on some good sites including NBCNews and should be on hackaday very soon (have been emailed telling me it will be up soon)

But I think it's just the price that kind of kills it. The shipping costs as much as the product!