What's odd to me is that companies don't seem to be targeting the niche anymore?

When there's no cheap but ok product, common sense would dictate that somebody would try to fill that niche.

Is everything a monopoly now?

99% of people don't care about 99% of things 1% of people really care about 1% of things

So we get people complaining about things but there is no market for it. I can guarantee you the average people does not care if a laptop have 4gb or 8gb or 32gb memory, it doesn't mean anything other than the number is bigger it is supposedly better.

Now apply this to every single item that you see. The table fan that I have right now is probably poorly designed piece of crap, but its good enough for me?