Bangalore: Each year countless tech enthusiasts rush to SXSW (South by Southwest); a set of film, interactive, and music festivals and conferences that take place every spring in Austin, Texas, hoping to be among the first to find the next big thing in social networking and mobile apps.

This year could be different from the rest; as it could be the year of hardware. One company which is breaking the barrier this spring is MakerBot, one of the companies behind 3-D printing. They unveiled the technology of the next generation: 3-D scanning and with Google unveiling its talking shoe this year’s SXSW is all set for hardware domination.

CEO Bre Pettis showed off the Digitizer 3-D Scanner, which is due to release later this year, would allow anyone, not just those with engineering or design backgrounds, to print pretty much anything they'd like.

The new emphasis on devices over software reflects a much larger shift in the startup and tech world, driven by tools like crowd funding and 3-D printing that make it cheaper, faster and easier to create prototypes. The trend is accelerating partly because of the popularity of and excitement around small companies making items like wearable fitness devices as well as Smartwatches developed by Pebble and smart thermostats created by Nest.

Now the devices are taking over the halls and convention center of South by Southwest, which is  historically known as the  launch pad for new software services; Twitter, Foursquare, GroupMe and Highlight all got their inaugural push on those convention center grounds.

The dropping costs of designing and building inventive new hardware products has prompted a wave of creativity and innovation that echoes the software boom a decade or two ago in Silicon Valley.

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