[hnnewguy]

>People are going to continue to use devices more and pens less right up until no one uses pens any more.

And what prevents Staples from adjusting their product offerings to lean more towards "devices", and less towards "pens"?

Amazon used to sell only books....

[onion2k]

Nothing at all, but their past performance of selling pens is not an indicator of how well they sell devices, or if there'll even be a market for selling other manufacturers devices in the future. Staples are very good at repeat sales of core business stationary. That market is not going to exist for that much longer.

Maybe they'll move to a different market successfully, maybe they won't. They wouldn't be the first once successful company to fail as the market changes though.

[Retra]

I've been hearing that for decades, and while the latest round of technology is a step in that direction, it is not significant enough to overcome the advantages of existing office supplies. (Largely because nobody really knows what those advantages are in a way that can be outmaneuvered digitally.)

How long do you imagine 'that much longer' to be? That sounds too weaselly to be accurate.