Ask Slashdot: Are the Big Players In Tech Even Competing With Each Other?

dryriver writes: For capitalism to work for consumers in a beneficial way, the big players have to compete hard against each other and innovate courageously. What appears to be happening instead, however, is that every year almost everybody is making roughly the same product at roughly the same price point. Most 4K TVs at the same price point have the same features -- there is little to distinguish manufacturer A from manufacturer B. Ditto for smartphones -- nobody suddenly puts a 3D scanning capable lightfield camera, shake-the-phone-to-charge-it or something similarly innovative into their next phone. Ditto for game consoles -- Xbox and Playstation are not very different from each other at all. Nintendo does 'different,' but underpowers its hardware. Ditto for laptops -- the only major difference I see in laptops is the quality of the screen panel used and of the cooling system. The last laptop with an auto stereoscopic 3D screen I have seen is the long-discontinued Toshiba Satellite 3D. Ditto for CPUs and GPUs -- it doesn't really matter whether you buy Intel, AMD, or Nvidia. There is nothing so 'different' or 'distinct' in any of the electronics they make that it makes you go 'wow, that is truly groundbreaking.' Ditto for sports action cameras, DSLRs, portable storage and just about everything else 'tech.' So where precisely -- besides pricing and build-quality differences -- is the competition in what these companies are doing? Shouldn't somebody be trying to 'pull far ahead of the pack' or 'ahead of the curve' with some crazy new feature that nobody else has? Or is true innovation in tech simply dead now?

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