Word: marketed
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...spawning new computers in abundance, many industry experts believe, the chips will indirectly give rise to a whole new industry of "software"companies to develop and market the programs that computers need to perform their tasks. Explains Richard Melmon, director of marketing for Umtech Corp., a maker of home computers: "No one would buy a stereo hi-fi if he could not also buy records or tapes to play on it, and it's the same with computers. We soon will see the dawn of a whole new kind of publishing industry...
...chips decline in price by about 30%. Meanwhile, declining prices stimulate increased sales, and these in turn lead to further price declines. It has been a long time since the inflation-battered American economy has seen a better example of how prices are supposed to behave in a free market. A typical example: in 1971 a Sharp Electronics pocket calculator sold for $395; today a more sophisticated model retails for $10.95. With their low cost and versatility, says Mai Northrup, vice president of Rockwell International, the chips are already "turning many present products into buggy whips...
Ironically, the industry's prodigious ability to produce the chips is also its Achilles' heel; the danger that chip makers could eventually produce far more and far more powerful chips than the market can absorb is real. By 1985, according to C. Lester Hogan, vice chairman of Fairchild Camera & Instrument Corp., it will be feasible to build a pocket calculator "that will be more powerful than, and almost as fast as," the $9 million Cray-1, built by Cray Research Inc. in Chippewa Falls, Wis., and recognized as the mightiest computer in the world...
Whether or not consumers are able to buy number-crunching beasts of that sort, industry faces an immediate challenge: what to do with the new and more powerful chips entering the market every few months? Warns William Howard, Motorola's director of strategic operations: "Our biggest problem is going to be finding ways of transforming all this innovation into viable products that are simple to use. If all we do is build more and more intricate devices that look and act like computers, we will not have done our job properly...
...nearly 85% of the industry's production is winding up in the retail market, mostly in the form of TV games, digital watches and calculators. Though products like these are giving the chip makers the sales volume needed to boost output and cut prices, they are hardly a durable base for a high-technology industry. For long-term growth, the chip makers are looking toward four key areas with huge potential...