The whole electronics supply chain is optimized towards volume manufacturing. There's a second supply chain for small volumes, but it's expensive: boards instead of chips or more expensive chips and boards(due to volume breaks), complex development, testing. The assembly costs are relatively minor.
I think the first step for the kinko[1] vision would be to largely automate the development and test costs. Maybe arduino is one path to this.
[1]I think it would make more sense as a centralized source who prints designs coupled with rapid shipping, not as a kinko.
Yea, it's true on supply but this is a structural problem (i.e. minimum stocking sizes at 4K units, etc.) that would change if the demand was there.
Agree with [1] - that's partially already here with ProtoMold, Sunstone Circuits, Ponoko, etc. - centralized makes sense when you have economies of scale, but my comment was that this scale can actually be driven lower via technology.
I think that development / test costs are a big deal, but maybe the "automate" part is more in the EDA sense of the term - than "sudo make me a sandwich" where your design is compiled directly.
I think the first step for the kinko[1] vision would be to largely automate the development and test costs. Maybe arduino is one path to this.
[1]I think it would make more sense as a centralized source who prints designs coupled with rapid shipping, not as a kinko.