TECHNOLOGICAL EVOLUTION OF PERSONAL COMPUTERS AND MARKET IMPLICATIONS

The aim of this article is to highlight how technological innovation i n the personal computer industry is modifying both market structure an d relationships between manufacturers and customers. To measure techno logical change a model based on the technical approach has been used. This model considers the product as a set of techno-economic character istics. About 650 models on the personal computer market between 1988 and 1994 were considered. Two main results emerge from this article: t echnical innovation has reduced the distance between the conservative user and the innovative user insofar as the former can nowadays purcha se, at little extra cost, high performance personal computers; whereas in the past, the personal computer was considered a machine for proce ssing information and working on texts, today it has become an indispe nsable tool for a variety of multimedia services, and consequently, te chnological innovation has pushed firms out of the personal computer p roduct-selling phase into a service-offering phase. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Inc.