Don,

I'd have to disagree. Companies back then were at the vanguard and making products they could be proud of won out over bean counting. Had people like Dave Smith, Tom Oberheim, Alan Pearlman, Dave Rossum, Scott Wedge, Peter Vogel, Kim Ryrie, and Bob Moog not taken chances, the arranger keyboard you play today would not exist in its current form.

While many of these companies closed up shop or sold out to the higher three, their designs and innovation live on today. Any Yamaha and Korg product made today owes itself to Sequential Circuits, Fairlight, and Emu's visionary ideas. The DX7 owed its success to John Chowning. While not the ultimate use of FM technology, the DX7 was the watered down keyboard marketed to the masses by Yamaha that brought new people to know what synthesis was even if they could never actually program a DX7.

I'm waiting for the day one of the big three steps up to the plate and turns the world upside down. Whether that happens in my lifetime is questionable.