Exactly. I used to see exactly that in network hardware. Back before they were acquired by 3Com, Netgear was the consumer brand for Bay Networks. If you popped the case off a Netgear consumer Ethernet switch, you found the internals were exactly the same as the matching professional-grade Bay Networks switch. The only difference was the silk-screening on the case, the warranty (1-year vs. lifetime) and the price ($60 vs. $200). The overhead of design and development and the fixed cost of the production facility was already paid for, so rather than give up a market or spend money designing another model BN simply rebadged their existing model, priced it at a markup over marginal cost, and presto instant consumer-grade product. The profit margin wasn't as great, but it was still more profit for minimal investment and by proper branding they could keep the high-margin sales to corporate customers.

Of course, network engineers quickly figured this out and simply went buying Netgear equipment for undemanding needs. Same hardware, if it hadn't broken in the first year it wasn't going to break (barring abuse) before it was going to be replaced anyway, so the warranty just didn't offer enough to be worth the extra $140. And complaints that you weren't supposed to do that were met with a distinct lack of sympathy and "It's our network, thank you very much, and we'll equip and manage it however we feel comfortable with.". If Bay Networks felt $60 wasn't a fair price for their Netgear units, well, they set the price on them, they were free to either raise the price to whatever they thought was fair or take the models off the market.

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