Smaller manufacturers will fold, and larger ones will leave the consumer market (like Micron/Crucial did), before the market has a chance to bounce back. If and when it does recover, it will be a market of much fewer choices.

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MSFT_Edging 6 hours ago | parent [-]

A somewhat comparable historical example is the destruction of the Swiss watch industry in the 70s with the advent of quartz and digital watches.

A Rolex Daytona today is known as a very fancy and even hard-to-get watch. In the 70s they were practically giving them away with other watch purchases because electronic watches were taking their lunch.

The bigger takeaway, I think, is the destruction and folding eventually lead to the Swatch group. People forget Rolex, Omega, et. al. were tool watches that were expensive but fairly attainable. Even into the 90s you could walk into a Rolex store and walk out with the watch you wanted. Nowadays you basically have to buy a watch to prove you're good enough to get the one you want.

I forsee a similar thing happening with computing hardware. There will be a small high-end side industry for non-datacenter customers.

The digital watch user will be renting time for a thin client via a datacenter provider. The wealthy or high status user will be able to purchase the expensive boutique home computing hardware they want.

	▲	marcosdumay 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Computers were like that twice already. That always ends. The only reason you have those watch brands to mention is because they are non-functional status symbols. People that want a watch buy something else. The same way, people that want a computer will buy from whoever is actually selling them. Manufacturers that want to sell only to datacenters won't last for long.
	▲	hnav 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Besides watches becoming expensive trinkets, a Rolex Daytona in the 70s was basically the same watch as what you could get from other manufacturers with the same movement inside. Today you have to spend at least 30k to get something comparable to it which is part of the reason that it's in a permanent demand crunch.