If I had enough time and money I would start a company specializing in just this: home and office hardware (from kitchen appliances to smartphones and players) designed with care and focus on offline-friendliness, autonomousness, durability, ease of repair, configurability, hackability, upgradability and privacy without compromise in features and the UX. I believe the potential market, although niche, already is big enough and the lack of competition is intriguing.
Not really. Mass-produced barely acceptable quality is enough for the majority of consumers in Western markets (especially given that something about half of the population has no meaningful cash savings), and people in developing countries can't afford anything else anyway.
On the other hand, the problem is the upfront cost. Plastic and metal molds cost a lot of money (which means you need large scale to recoup that investment), anything with software will need the entire chain from developing the hardware and software to a secure way of delivering software updates, some stuff has extensive certification requirements (anything with radio interfaces, HDMI and other licensed connectors or to be used on/in vehicles) if you want to do it legally, some things are impossible to manufacture in an "open" sense while still being usable (physical media players, due to copy protection schemes), many parts have ridiculous MOQs making small scale manufacturing impossible to extremely expensive, and then you will need some sort of logistics chain to get your product to the customer and in case of warranty claims back from the customer.
But I think, in absolute numbers, the minority already is big enough to make this profitable and is growing. Targeting the majority is not the only profitable/optimal strategy, targeting a specific group which is just big enough to sustainably cover your expenses (salaries included) and is not targeted by a lot of competitors also is great.
I would pay up to twice the price (or even more) of an any mainstream appliance for a really great (prioritizing privacy/auotonomy, repairability/durability and hackability/customizability) one. And I believe I'm not alone.
I have the same dream. But making it barely sustainable (let alone profitable) would be neigh impossible. Maybe more of an open source community organization that would salvage, use and reuse components from the existing partially broken appliances of "proper" manufacturers in new enclosures and form factors designed from the get-go mainly (exclusively?) for easy servicing/upgrade by the average user, and open/flexible enough for advanced/maker types.
This would be great - it’s such a sad state of affairs that there is a need for products that “just fo what they’re supposed to do - without acting against my best interests”
I would add to that the option to 'self-host' the smart bits. Why have 10 computers idling all the time if you can have 1 computer in use most of the time. This obviously adds complexity (you either need a compute module, or a module that connects to your PC), but it would be nice for a customer to just buy one or the other pre-packaged, and it also improves the repairability.
If I had enough time and money I would start a company specializing in just this: home and office hardware (from kitchen appliances to smartphones and players) designed with care and focus on offline-friendliness, autonomousness, durability, ease of repair, configurability, hackability, upgradability and privacy without compromise in features and the UX. I believe the potential market, although niche, already is big enough and the lack of competition is intriguing.