“TI hammered its competitors in diodes and transistors, moved on to prevail in semiconductors, and ultimately in hand-held calculators and digital watches. Later, however, the management of TI encountered severe competitive problems in its watch and calculator businesses. Overreliance on experience-curve-based strategies at the expense of market-driven strategies is often cited as the underlying flaw in TI’s approach. This is an oversimplification. TI’s determined effort to drive costs down allowed no room for product-line proliferation. That single-minded focus created an opening for hard-pressed competitors such as Casio and Hewlett-Packard to sell on features rather than on price—a strategy that eventually became the standard for the industry when costs and prices declined to the point that consumers cared more for function and style than for price.”