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Rise of the Small Brands

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the anything-to-stop-getting-gouged dept.

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."

4 of 162 comments (clear)

  1. Just shop at the outlets by BadAnalogyGuy · · Score: 4, Funny

    The products are perhaps not the cutting edge stuff, but you can rest assured that you're buying a name brand and all the piece of mind that that gets you. Not crap like Akai or Vizio. I'm talking Sorny, Magnetbox, and Panaphonics.

  2. Lite-On by webmistressrachel · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Lite-On deserve a mention here; at a time when Plextor was the the only writer in town, Lite-On released cheap 32x and 40x CD-Writers which could rip damaged CDs that nothing else would rip or even play. Before long, as prices fell, I was building a Lite-On into every customer's system.

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  3. How many are there really? by Bombula · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I would be more interested to see how many manufacturers there are. A lot of the smaller brands use the same suppliers and assemble to pretty much the same specs as the bigger brands - that goes for everything from consumer electronics to things like PC hardware. It's kind of like a shirt from The Gap vs a shirt from Structure - they're all made in either the same Filipino sweatshop, or the sweatshop next door, and either way they use the same supplies. And that, of course, is where all the 'fakes' come from.

    Of course, there is always the occassional flair of inspired creativity. I was in Asia recently and brought back a $5 'PolyStation' for a friend as a gag gift. It was a PS1 shell with about 500 NES roms built in - hilarious.

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  4. Re:Too bad by pubjames · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Being a non name brand company doesn't help with the cost of manufacturing electronics.

    True. But you realise that there is often a mark-up just because of brand name? There are even manufacturers that have two lines of products, one with the luxury brand and one the "cheapo" brand, whilst the products are essentially the same - the luxury brand just having different finishing and packaging.