[Atropos]

I don't know, the general theory of "Companies outsourcing themselves to death" sounds fine, but somehow the examples are never convincing. I mean if you compare the development of Dell vs. Asustek in GoogleFinance, it really doesn't seem that Asustek is better off. Is it really such a tragedy if Dell isn't in the dying pc-manufacturing business anymore?

[cturner]

Exactly. How many Dell-like companies have we seen die off over the last fifteen years because they were stuck in their ways. The PC companies that have survived are those that made it in to services work - HP, IBM, Dell. Oracle has worked hard to get into the sector. Plenty of names that come to mind for great-computer companies who got squashed - Compaq, Digital, Gateway, Olivetti, Sun, SGI.