On 22/02/18 08:53 AM, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
Do you really think the largest manufacturers would stop making them if the market wasn't declining?
As I point out, there are other reasons the major manufacturers would want to get out of a market that is no longer profitable *FOR THEM*. Heck, IBM got out of the PC business that it founded, sold things off to Leveno; the Asian clones just drove the market too low for their kind of business methods. They couldn't become 'lean' enough fast enough for it to be economically viable. Some of their competitors could, but they also sold on the one 'hooks' and did not have the tiers and inflexibility of business processes that IBM had. Changes cost, and more tiers, the more inflexible the business, the higher the cost of change and the more reluctance to make it. Nothing new here. It happened in the early days of the auto industry, many badges from the start of the 20th century are not around now and the cycle - almost - repeated itself with the "Japanese Invasion" of the auto industry when the US industry proved too inflexible, suffered competitive hist and was eventually *FORCED* to change, and dis so by squeezing out the smaller brands. Which further proves my point: there is more than one, more than TWO, responses to changes in market demands and production efficiencies. -- /me squares everything, to remove negativeness (except for imaginary things, which don't matter, and complex things, which are too complex). -- mdw, on IRC -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org