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Comment by PeterisP | Hacker News Reader

It's a complete nonsequitur - are Luis Vuitton/Gucci/Prada/whatever accesories commodities because "from a technical perspective nothing they do is particularly innovative" ?

It doesn't really matter how you make your product not-a-commodity. The market repeatedly shows that it doesn't treat Apple product as commodities, therefore they are not commodities, and they can have very different business fundamentals than, say, Dell or HTC.

And it doesn't matter if the escape of commoditization was achieved by R&D, PR, divine intervention or whatever else; There are many possible ways of differentiating your products; and the market behavior for commodity and non-commodity goods/services is objectively different no matter why your product is/isn't a commodity.

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Luis Vuitton/Gucci/Prada accessories are commodities by definition.

From wiki: >In economics, a commodity is a marketable item produced to satisfy wants or needs. Economic commodities comprise goods and services.

Are you suggesting that Apple products are not marketable items, thereby being goods? Or that their cloud products are not services?

Are you suggesting that a Luis Vuitton handbag is not a marketable item produced to satisfy consumer wants?

The next sentence is

"The exact definition of the term commodity is specifically used to describe a class of goods for which there is demand, but which is supplied without qualitative differentiation across a market."

Luis Vuitton/Gucci/Prada accessories strictly are NOT commodities by definition.

"marketable item produced to satisfy wants or needs" is a neccessary but not sufficient condition for being called a commodity.

Commodities is a subset of all goods / marketable items - those that have high fungibility and low differentiation. It's not a binary classification, but on "commodity <> not-commodity" scale Luis Vuitton/Gucci/Prada stuff is near the extreme not-commodity end.

Actually, the same wikipedia explains it quite well in the sentences after that first line.

You're using the wrong definition (and truncating it to boot) for "commodity" here. The key element is the "undifferentiated" element, and, while there's room to debate the true level of differentiation of mass-manufactured products to which a brand label is applied, the point is that what sets Luis Vuitton, Gucci, Prada, etc., apart in the marketplace is in fact a perceived differentiation in quality from products not- or differently-branded.

I thought you got unfairly slammed for your Apple comments, but you're really pursuing a barren ground here.

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