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Hardware manufacturing process is a high volume, low cost, high profit operation. Processes have been optimized to consume the least amount of resources for fabrication.Although people is highly skilled it is somewhat easy to replace people on production lines in case someone drops off. Besides, they sell lots and lots of products because there's a broad market and consumers for that piece of hardware.
On the other hand, software (other than widely used Operating Systems) most of the time have smaller markets or serve a tiny fraction (in proportion) of the computer users; thus the amount of sales is smaller.
People that develop and maintain software is a lot harder to find, they demand higher income and in general they cost a lot more than people on production lines, they are not easily replaced either.
Given the above, in proportion, the hardware production, although it is a much larger scale business their profits are equally large (due to high-volume sales). The software production industry is very small in comparison and their cost is somewhat higher, leaving them with a much smaller profit per sale.
Also, a software firm often offer discounts for recurring customers (i.e. for an upgraded version of the software) and the hardware industry does not. Sometimes they have trade-ins but even then they recycle the products, so the consumer is giving them back the cost of the product.
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True
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True
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