Sal,
To me a commodity item is one that has gone through its development cycle and can be easily manufactured by anyone with enough will and cash. In other words, there is no longer any intellectual content involved, and the design is frozen in time. 8 and 16MB DRAM chips are certainly commodity items, but not 32 or 64 MB (yet).
PCs have been around since the mid 70s (Have you heard of the Altair?) and there still isn't any 'final form' for the PC. Doesn't it strike you as odd that the Japanese have never been able to dominate the PC market like they have with every other electronic product? Sure, they make all the internals, but the final form takes shape in the US. Why? Because PC's are general purpose machines, and, by nature, are still evolving. It's a moving target, and a commodity is standing still.
In the future the PC may differentiate into several specialized forms, like the NC, and, thus, become a commodity. But it's not assured.
BTW Congrats on calling the recent tech downturn. I'm not convinced we're into a general bear market, though, astrology or no astrology.
Len
PS. Thought you mike like to hear what Takahashi, the guy who stole the DRAM market from the US in the mid 80s, said about DRAMs:
"A chip is merely a ball bearing--flattened out, with a picture on it." |
