Comment: Buyers will suffer if recession hits British PC firms

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 28 Apr 2008 at 11:48

But as Stewart Mitchell discovered in a recent PC Probe, more and more of the components coming out of China are cloned - fakes so convincing that Customs and even the manufacturers themselves can't tell them apart. Often the first time anyone realises there's a problem is when a component fails - probably just after their year's warranty has expired...

Supermarket shelf stackers

The desktop PC has become a commodity: a high-tech can of beans that manufacturers are forced to stack high and sell cheap - even on supermarket shelves. And all the signs indicate the laptop market is heading down a similar path, following the success of the £200 Asus Eee PC. "If Asus starts to do well, we are all in trouble - that's just a race to the bottom,"
said Sony's senior vice-president Mike Arbary recently.

If a company with Sony's resources is worried, what hope does a small British firm have? We thought the PC market was cut-throat back in
1998. Today, it's positively savage. Join me here in ten years' time when I'll be bemoaning the fact that my Mandarin isn't good enough to communicate with my PC manufacturer's automated support bot and wondering whether to buy a new
computer or wait a week for the free one they're giving away with The Sunday Times.