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The Auto Industry May Mimic the 1980s PC Industry
An anonymous reader writes: An article at TechCrunch looks at some interesting parallels between the current automobile industry and the PC industry of the 1980s. IBM was dominant in 1985, employing four times as many people as its nearest competitor. But as soon as Windows was released, the platform became more important for most end users than the manufacturer. Over the next decade, IBM lost its throne. In 2015, we're on the cusp of a similar change: the computerized car. Automakers, though large and well-established, haven't put much effort into building the platform on which their cars run. Meanwhile, Google's Android Auto and Apple CarPlay are constantly improving. As soon as those hit a breakthrough point where it's more important for a customer to have the platform than the manufacturer's logo on the side, the industry is likely to resemble a replay of the PC industry in the 1980s.
Nah, cars have used modular electronics for ages. Car makers don't make much of anything actually, that is why they are called Assembly Plants. So they can install anything and change it on a whim from model to model and the owners can also change things if they have the money and the inclination.
Too many differences to list. One, the cost of entry into the market for making automobiles is staggering, so there aren't going to be any new manufacturers. Quite different from the PC. Two, the cost to the buyer. PC's got cheaper but cars are getting more expensive. Three, you can live without a PC (you could back then, anyway) but very few cars are bought as luxury items. So, the vast majority of cars are going to continue to be sold as transportation devices and not as smartphone substitutes.
That's almost true but electric cars are much more simple than our current internal combustion engine powered vehicles.
Compare a Tesla with a Chevy, there must be an order of magnitude fewer parts in the Tesla.
This along with the increasing importance of the car software platform (monitoring, communication, self driving, etc) could present a perfect storm for traditional auto companies that are caught napping.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
>> IBM wasn't undone by the platform, they were undone by the CLONES running the platform.
IBM wasn't "undone" - period. Instead, the termination of its consumer-facing foray allowed it to tighten its grip on the short and curlies of the far more profitable corporate world, and even gave it a "PC 2.0" phase where it sold premium laptops (ThinkPads) to corporate buyers before selling that business too.
Cars will still cost a fortune and need to be reliable enough to get around for years.
Just because it runs some fancy app interface that will be obsolete almost as soon as it's installed isn't really the reason to buy a specific brand or model of car.
Head units are replaceable, even if the manufacturers keep trying to make it harder to do.
Um, the PC industry has been regulated since at least the 1950's, and the Internet was created via a socialist military experiment.
Did you forget the sarcasm tags?
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
They only discontinued the Firebird in.. I'll guess 2002 without looking. I do know the Trans Am package was available every year from 1969 until the model was killed off.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.