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Rise of the Small Brands
gbobeck writes "Yahoo News is running a story looking at smaller brands in the marketplace. The article discusses the increase of numbers of people who are choosing to purchase lesser known brands of electronics. The bottom line is the major electronics makers still dominate the market, but collective presence of lesser-known brands has helped keep prices down while boosting product choices."
Too eager for FP to properly comment....booyaka anyway, funnily enough me and my partner in geekdom (beaner) were talking about this the other day after I politely slagged his (random branded) dvd player. In his defense he started listing the multitude of features his did in comparison to my (reasonlably new) player and it struck me that he had paid a hell of a lot less for something that did a hell of a lot more! I guess time will tell if it goes tits up after a few months but till then me thinks yay for the small guy and his cheaper feature rich products pushing down the rest... ...go on my son(s)
...it's just branded differently. Take Radio Shack for example, all of their stereo stuff called Optimus was really Pioneer. All of their Realistic scanners were really Uniden....yadda yadda..TV's were RCA.
I'm willing to bet it's just like laptops, only a handful of places make them, and they are customized and rebranded per customer request.
Hell, i'm sure the same goes for generic food in the supermarket.
The biggest difference is that the big name brands send a QC manager down to the plant to make sure that everything is to-spec. He's generally a huge pain in the ass to the subcontractor because he forces everyone to work longer and harder than they normally would if he wasn't around.
On the other hand, smaller manufacturers typically don't do that kind of thing. It's partly because they can't spare a full-time person to spend a whole production run in another country, and partly because they have less sway over the hardware manufacturer. These factories listen and bow to Sony and Panasonic because they have a lot to gain if they can become a good manufacturing partner. Not so much with the little guys.
So yes, the stuff is basically the same across brands, but the bigger names typically have better QC than the little guys.