I don't really think software was ever the moat with these kinds of products? The moat with hardware products has always been access to electrical engineering talent and access to cheap assembly/manufacturing. And marketing. And the $$ in your pocket to fund all the above without having sales yet.

I have written probably a dozen software synthesizers over the last 20 years, for fun, never profit. I would have preferred those to be hardware products. But I lack all of the above. As do most.

I have worked in several embedded companies. The software that runs on them was often considered to be the least important part of the expense chain despite involving the most amount of total work hours.

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