How accessible is integrated electronics to SMEs?

A little over 10 years ago I was at the end of a project that had been looking at developments in the electronics in the UK and globally. During the course of the 3 year project we saw big changes in the level of integration and came across the term "system on a chip" for the first time. There seemed to be a huge rift between large enterprise designed products such as the mobile phone in the late 1990's (they now look like small bricks) and the products packaged in chunky boxes with electronics mounted on green, flat printed circuit boards inside manufactured by small companies (which looked like big bricks). A line of enquiry we never followed up in detail was: how could small companies access the highly integrated technology used by the large enterprises?

Secretly I was also saddened by the thought that budding engineers would never have the pleasure of the home electronic projects that inspired me, as electronic technology seemed to be moving out of reach of small companies, let alone the hobbyist. This thought came back to me a couple of years ago. I asked fellow participants at a workshop where the issue of educating the next generation of engineers was being debated, "As a young person, did any of you have home electronics projects on the go?" The result was a sea of raised hands mainly in the 50+ age group and an animated buzz of conversation. A little later it occurred to me to ask who still had electronics projects on the go and the same set of hands went up. It appears that many of us engineers showed our technical aptitude at an early age, and still can't resist using our skills outside of our work environment.

It appears that the concerns that I had back in 1997 about electronics becoming less accessible to small businesses and hobby users was completely unfounded. Anecdotally I have found that the building blocks used have changed though. Transistors and integrated circuits have been replaced by computer mother boards as the components of choice. Open source operating systems and software provide a low cost route to customising the hardware, and commercial operating systems are available too. In fact, rather than less accessible, the converse appears to be true, and I am aware of small enterprises that make very innovative use of large building blocks in their products. I also read of unexpected applications for modified commercial products too. X-boxes modified to perform complex simulations for physicists, and the Apple iTouch used to display medical images.

This now begs the question, if electronics is indeed becoming more accessible, what other unexpected applications are out there? I would be really interested to hear from anyone who can share details on any examples.