Sony's design philosophy divides a product's lifespan into basically three categories, morning, noon, and night. Morning is the begining, new technology, and it appeals to the techno people, the early adopters, these are the computer geeks, the comp sci majors, the defense contractors, when the product is the internet. Noon is the products hey day, when everyone is using it, it's popular, and it's everywhere. The product is seemingly perfect. So now everyone uses the internet, not everyone but someday that number will approach, as bandwidth and computing become more widespread. net access at the library, e-commerce during the christmas season, information services and music from the web. After this comes the twilight, when the technology wanes, something new pops up, and the old existing tech needs to diversify in order to keep people buying, it becomes a niche market. if computers are the product in question, just look at the iMac and iBook, definitely niche computers, good to look at. However, these could fall into either noon or night, because they are either for the masses, or filling a niches for fashionable computers. So what's next? What's in store? Niches. Find your cubby hole and start charging admission.