High-end computer market
On Designtechnica, I read an interesting article about the direction that our mainstream computer industry is taking. They are trying to make the computer a common appliance, like a television, or refrigerator, every house should have one. I believe this is good and true, the computer is a very handy tool that all should use. The problem with this is that for everyone to own a computer the computers must be affordable to all and in making the computer affordable, the cutting edge components are not used.
Every market is defined by the participants that choose to do business in that industry. On the audio side, the home theater market has changed very little in the way of technology over the last 10 years compared to the computer market. And there is a distinct difference between a $300 Denon receiver and a $2000 Denon receiver in the way of features. The same holds true in the car market. I do not think a single person reading this can argue that a Ferrari and a Daewoo use the same parts; and you certainly cannot build a Ferrari for the price of a Daewoo using store bought parts. But when it comes to the computer market however, there is very little difference between the high-end computer systems being offered between various PC manufacturers, and a system you choose to build on your own; except the price.
The first question we really need to ask ourselves is whether the computer market is defined by computer manufacturers such as Dell, Gateway and HP? Hardly, and I will tell you why. If that were the case, the home theater market would be defined by the likes of Emerson, Craig and Fisher. And the car market would be defined by Daewoo, and Hyundai. But the sad truth is that the computer market is shaping up to where there will be little difference between each computer system and everything will be forever priced below $500. But there is still hope in the form of specialized niches within this industry.
One such niche is the home super-computer market. Companies like Alienware, VoodooPC, and Falcon Northwest have been thriving on selling mega powered cutting edge systems with the latest computer hardware and award winning paint jobs. To the average home computer user, a system sporting the latest video card, processor and hundreds of gigabytes of hard drive space may be overkill. But to the hardcore gamer and PC enthusiast, it commonplace and often required.
I believe that Ian Bell, the author of the article, has a good point. I have never even thought of the high priced computers as high-end computers. It is only common sense that they could/would be called high-end it is just that I build all of my computers and the components I use are more on the high-end side so they seem common place to me. Of course, I don’t pay the “high-end” price for my computers. Ian also talks about the HTPC market as needing a high-end side. I totally agree with him on this fact
I also found it interesting that Liebermann Inc. found its place in this article and perhaps that is what the title of the article refers to, “The Eight Thousand Dollar Computer“. The verdict is still out, I can’t tell you if the company is real or not. If you have been following the comments on the posts I have about Liebermann Inc., you’ll find evidence that the company does exist put they aren’t to good at customer satisfaction. If they are going to try to be the model of a high-end computer company, they will have to learn to make there customers happy especially after such a controversial start in the business. I’m still keeping an eye out for news on Liebermann Inc., I’m really looking forward to a major magazine doing another article on the company.
April 3rd, 2004 at 1:39 pm
My site, PC Synapse, has posted the first review on the internet of a Go-L (Liebermann) product. Check it out on the front page - http://www.pcsynapse.com