The generic cheapness that may portend the death of hardware is the same force that is causing a renaissance of hardware hacking.
Most major cities have hackerspaces or techshops (http://www.techshop.ws/) where you can 3D print and use CNC mills. It's not uncommon to take apart cheap hardware and hack something into it (failure is much easier to stomach on a sub-$100 device).
Arduino has been the main driver in this area for years, but mark my words: Go on Raspberry Pi is the hardware platform of the future. Go is close to the metal and has great concurrency, which make it ideal for interfacing with sensors. No more dealing with Arduino's lack of real threads and the weird sketch format.
good point. I'm pretty happy that hardware hacking is potentially becoming mainstream again, hopefully it makes complex hardware design seem less and less like an ivory tower affair like it has for the past 20-30 years.
I've worked in the industry at a chip startup, and it's one where people hold on to stacks of internal design books across companies because the information is very niche and protected.
As far as the commoditization of consumer hardware, everyone in the industry knows about it, and they're responding by investing more by offshoring, or focusing on higher-end industrial markets. Hardware/chip startups are increasingly rare (or are very underfunded) unless they offer a significant game-changer due to the capital costs involved.
Most major cities have hackerspaces or techshops (http://www.techshop.ws/) where you can 3D print and use CNC mills. It's not uncommon to take apart cheap hardware and hack something into it (failure is much easier to stomach on a sub-$100 device).
Arduino has been the main driver in this area for years, but mark my words: Go on Raspberry Pi is the hardware platform of the future. Go is close to the metal and has great concurrency, which make it ideal for interfacing with sensors. No more dealing with Arduino's lack of real threads and the weird sketch format.
My Pis arrive tomorrow; long live hardware!