Well, they might invest in r&d. If they can take advantage to increasing returns to scale in meeting demand they'd likely just build more whatevers.

This is true, and relates to the points i made later about the nature of demand and production structure mattering.

Won't it? I think it will. Lower costs -> higher accounting profits.

See the PS where I go into this in more detail.

I don't follow this. Given that they are early-adopters, only other early adopters are present in the market at that point in time. How can they be freeriding off consumers who are willing to strike a tough bargain, as you say, if those bargain strikers are not present in the market by definition? You mean they benefit later when the later adopters enter? presumably the early adopters are at that time moved on to something newer and better.

Perhaps my language wasn't clear. Obviously, they're not freeriding at the point in time when the market is young. But by the time the market gets large enough and costs drop, they are effectively freeriding.

For instance, I would probably pay something like $50/month for Facebook, but I get it for free because Facebook knows that most of its users wouldn't be willing to pay for their service, so they offer it for free. So I save $50/month, freeriding on the stinginess of other users.

You may argue that the early adopters paid their dues by buying the technology early on. But there could be a bunch of young people who "would have been early adopters" if they'd been around in the technology's infancy but they weren't around.

This need not be the case especially in the face of further tech improvements in production or dramatically lower costs of factors of production, even for exogenous reasons.

Yes, that is correct, it need not be the case. At the same time, I think it's a consideration.

More in my next reply comment.