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August 09, 2004
Flextronics' Equity Investment in frog design
Interesting: frog design to receive equity investment from Flextronics. Flextronics is a contract hardware manufacturer (there's a good Wired magazine article from 2001 about them) which builds, among other things, the Xbox.
This seems very smart. Adding high-end product design services should make Flextronics even more appealing to clients outside the consumer space, like medical equipment companies, where visual and interaction design is important, but probably not a market differentiator. In other words, clients who don't already have design as a core competance, and would have contracted frog anyway. But it does suggest that "design" itself is becoming a commodity service like manufacturing.
So what happens to frog's Digital Design and Brand & Space design departments? It's hard to imagine anyone coming to Flextronics looking for those.
Posted by Andrew at August 9, 2004 11:57 AM