Yep, there are a lot of theories about how they can speed up 3DP but in the final analysis, its getting a product to market that's key to success.
3DS, meanwhile has products on the market now, even as they work on improvements, they're still earning profits and diversity, even while they carry on research in the background with many specialized teams, working on different materials and looking at newer and ever more innovative approaches.
As such, the path to market is already built out for 3DS and with support systems already in place and operating, they become the center and the ones that these newcomers are trying to match, emulate or beat. I'm sure that with so many possibilities and possible alternative approaches being so obvious, Avi knew not to try to be the "be all and end all" of 3DP, but to seek to collaborate and join with the best and most promising operators in the field as they appear. Which is what drives the need for so much M&A in the past, and will in the present and future.
As we've said before, this technology is not simple and will require a very open minded company able to bring a wide variety of developments into a central organization able to add it's market muscle as well as it's administrative expertise, to create a simplified interface for customers to access it all under, rather than be forced to go it alone with single utility companies. As systems evolve end users look for many backwards compatibilities, add ons and upgrades to take some of the cost out of moving ahead to the next level. That's something that these single product companies won't be able to offer.
All of which is to simply restate that 3DP is not going to be something that explodes suddenly over all applications, but is instead something that will constantly grow. So the "tree with the biggest trunk" is probably going to be the biggest success in the end. How long it will take to get from millions to billions and beyond is anyone's guess. But, I believe that given the time, 3DS will be the company that holds the center of the widest variety of all these incremental successes.
