>>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.
Yes, but how lucrative is the market in general compared to before? How many new players do you see, and how much innovation is happening?
I've always been of the opinion that commoditization is good for the consumer only in the short run (since prices drop). In the long run, it hurts the consumer because there is very little if any innovation in commoditized markets.
A lack of groundbreaking innovation leads to commoditization, not the other way around. A commoditized market is ripe for new innovation to set an offering apart—and if that innovation is big enough, it may just end up creating a new market.
The feature phone market was pretty commoditized, but that didn't stop people from trying to figure out ways to create a new, less-commoditized, market by making phones smarter. And touch-based smartphones, too, will become increasingly commoditized until someone comes up with another revolution.
Similarly, the basic functionality of a car has been commoditized for decades, but competition keeps innovation going.
Other than PCI, PCIe, USB, Bluetooth, discrete 2D graphics cards, 3D accelerators, multi-core x86, DDR, SSDs, High quality LCDs and hundreds of other improvements it is worth saying has you do, Reg, 'What has commoditization ever done for us?'
Incremental improvement is not innovation. Very few of what you listed made a big enough difference in the status quo that I would qualify them as innovation.
Yes, but how lucrative is the market in general compared to before? How many new players do you see, and how much innovation is happening?
I've always been of the opinion that commoditization is good for the consumer only in the short run (since prices drop). In the long run, it hurts the consumer because there is very little if any innovation in commoditized markets.