Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
It's a specialist product, not a mass-market consumer product like a car. Specialist products tend to be expensive, by their very nature. There is a very, very restricted market for such items, hence R&D costs have to be recouped from a relatively small number of unit sales.
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I have a real life example of a “specialist product”. Some few years ago I began to develop early onset age related macular degeneration. While I could still see, I began researching book magnifying devices, AKA “readers” that would enable me to read after my AMD progressed to the point of not being able to read.
These devices consisted of a camera on a stand with an area below to place the book. It would then project a picture of the book on a large screen. To my dismay I found that these systems cost thousands to tens of thousands of dollars. The ones that cost thousands parlayed an already existing computer, and consisted of nothing more than a camera stand, a webcam and some webcam software. The ones that cost tens of thousands graciously included a five hundred dollar computer!
I reasoned that high res webcams and full screen webcam software already existed for tens of dollars rather than thousands, and the camera stand was little more than a tripod, also tens of dollars. So for a hundred or so dollars and a little ingenuity, I could functionally duplicate a system costing a few thousand!
Thankfully, my AMD stabilized and was restricted to only on eye, so I didn’t need a reader; but I remain appalled by the markups involved anytime a product can be remotely defined as “medical”!