Investigation of the Competitiveness of Open Source Hardware Based on the Consumer Surveys in Japan and China: For the Case of Arduino

Abstract

In the open source hardware, all of the schematics and the related software source codes are open and it is legal to make compatible devices. Since the manufacturers of the compatible devices can avoid the cost to develop the hardware and the software, they can provide the compatible devices at lower prices. Due to this feature, the developer of the original hardware faces the competition with the compatible devices. It is possible that the original developer is defeated because of the relatively higher price. In the real world, however, there is coexistence among the original device and its compatible ones. To obtain the insight for this phenomenon, we picked up the microcontroller board Arduino and investigated how its users evaluate the original device and its compatible devices. We made the investigations in Japan and China to see the dependence on the cultures. It was found that the price is not an important factor and that original hardware is more preferred in China than in Japan.