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The Rise and Fall of Silicon Graphics

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346 points BirAdam | 3 comments | 05 Apr 24 16:42 UTC | HN request time: 0.227s | source
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martinpw ◴[05 Apr 24 18:13 UTC] No.39945361[source]▶
Whenever this topic comes up there are always comments saying that SGI was taken by surprise by cheap hardware and if only they had seen it coming they could have prepared for it and managed it.

I was there around 97 (?) and remember everyone in the company being asked to read the book "The Innovator's Dilemma", which described exactly this situation - a high end company being overtaken by worse but cheaper competitors that improved year by year until they take the entire market. The point being that the company was extremely aware of what was happening. It was not taken by surprise. But in spite of that, it was still unable to respond.

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1. bombcar ◴[05 Apr 24 23:50 UTC] No.39948653[source]▶
The way to survive is to eat your own lunch. Be the low cost competitor and cannabilize your own market.

Otherwise you don’t build the iPhone because you don’t want to lose iPod sales.

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2. VelesDude ◴[06 Apr 24 07:36 UTC] No.39950704[source]▶
I not so obvious but similar example of this would be with Nintendo and the Switch. They had always hand their handheld and consoles as separate things but eventually decided to just combine them into a single thing. So instead of double dipping on the hardware and potentially the software sales, it just become a single entity. And to say that has worked out well for them is an understatement. Sold 139 million units and are still taking their time of getting to a successor. They are probably going to take the #1 highest selling games machine of all time and they did it by going against their old business practices.
3. musicale ◴[07 Apr 24 03:21 UTC] No.39957916[source]▶
> Be the low cost competitor and cannabilize your own market. Otherwise you don’t build the iPhone because you don’t want to lose iPod sales.

The iPhone was a high-cost competitor to the iPod. And Apple knew that multi-function devices usually offered poorer user experiences than more focused, (mostly) single-function devices like the iPod. But they still did the iPhone.