Cookie cutter collisions [monoculture industry]

Abstract

Are you the victim of a monoculture? Perhaps you bought a home DSL router, found its set-up software too impenetrable to get working, and replaced it with another brand only to find it had the same software from the same chip company. Or perhaps you've been comparing DVD players and have realised that, for less than #50, they're basically all the same. What's going on? Marketing types talk grandly about differentiation being the key to sales in technology. Yet, many products look the same and feel the same. Has the electronics business turned into clone creation?