{"id":4249,"date":"2012-03-30T11:08:18","date_gmt":"2012-03-30T15:08:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=4249"},"modified":"2014-03-10T23:33:32","modified_gmt":"2014-03-11T03:33:32","slug":"the-smartphone-wars-exit-blackberry-pursued-by-a-bear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=4249","title":{"rendered":"The Smartphone Wars: Exit Blackberry, pursued by a bear"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Comes today the news that Blackberry is <a href=\"http:\/\/finance.yahoo.com\/news\/blackberry-maker-cede-most-consumer-212323407.html\">giving up on the consumer market.<\/a> Of course this means the company will be as dead as Antigonus shortly.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Why do I say this?  Because one of the most ironclad rules of the tech industry is this: <em>retreat upward never works<\/em>.  If your company is failing, withdrawing from mass markets to focus on the high end may look like a smart move for a few quarters but it makes eventual doom more certain.  The decline and fall of Sun Microsystems is probably the most recent major example but far from the only one.<\/p>\n<p>Retreat upwards fails because it leaves space for your competitors to attack you from the low end &#8211; in effect, you&#8217;re pinning a sign on your backside that says &#8220;DISRUPT ME!&#8221;  Also, in any hardware-centered business, process improvements happen fastest where volume is highest (that is, at the low end); retreat upwards means your competitors will capture those gains faster than you do.<\/p>\n<p>More <a href=\"http:\/\/www.readwriteweb.com\/archives\/the_end_of_rim_as_we_know_it.php?utm_source=feedburner&#038;utm_medium=feed&#038;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+readwriteweb+%28ReadWriteWeb%29\">grim details<\/a>.  Company is not profitable and will no longer be issuing financial projections.  Balsillie is leaving. The COO and CTO are bailing out.<\/p>\n<p>Everything about this smells of death.  Not that it should come as a surprise to regular readers, because I&#8217;ve been saying RIM was doomed and explaining why since <a href=\"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=3373\">last June<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Comes today the news that Blackberry is giving up on the consumer market. Of course this means the company will be as dead as Antigonus shortly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[34],"class_list":["post-4249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-smartphone-wars","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4249"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5403,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4249\/revisions\/5403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}