Arthur makes an interesting point.

The even bigger picture is that to stay in business every company needs to make profits. Irrespective of smaller factors like individual product differences and competitiveness, companies need cashflow to satisfy shareholders and keep employees in jobs. Without the consumer constantly buying new products the whole system would collapse. No consumer wants to buy shares on Wall Street at the moment and the system does not look healthy...

With the progress in technology it is probably easier to convince consumers to buy a new keyboard than many other more mature market technologies because there is always some new gizmo you can put in with the advance in microprocessors and relative cheapness of memory over time. This looks to hold for a few more years yet I guess.

Keyboards now have to compete with computer games, CD, DVD, satellite, video, digital cameras, all sorts of things for the attention of consumers... things that were not there in the more simple days of just music lovers buying a piano or organ???