Is Epson the only traditional printing company with grand 3D visions? (Courtesy of Epson.com)

I was reading a great article about how traditional printer maker Epson is entering the 3D space.  It makes me wonder if history is repeating itself like the dawn of the internet commerce revolution.  During that time the market was flooded with new stores selling everything from vitamins to pet products.  In a lot of ways the traditional brick and mortar companies were late to the party, but if you look at the internet today they essentially dominate.  There was one major new player in Amazon.com, but most of the new guys either went away, were acquired or were relegated to a niche.  Today we see a flood of new printers hitting the market and it makes me wonder how many will have staying power and which large company currently sitting on the sideline might come in and dominate.  Remember the portable digital music space?  The iPod certainly wasn’t the first digital music player, but when Apple released it everything else quickly disappeared into obscurity.  Now Epson’s entry appears to be more for the industrial market, but can you imagine the bombshell if Apple, Google or some other consumer product company launched a consumer 3D printer?