You may not remember, but Blackberry (BBRY) once occupied the throne of the mobile device market; no company could touch it (you know... until Steve Jobs happened). Unfortunately for Blackberry, and its investors, the times have long changed. Since the 2007 release of the original iPhone, Blackberry has continuously ceded its market share to Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), and, most recently, Chinese mobile device maker Xiaomi.
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Customers Love Competition
Like so much that emanates from the complex science, the economic idea of “competition” is something of an abstract concept. It can be difficult to envision how the desire of individual firms to outperform one another, in the market, can translate to better products and lower prices in the long-run.
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Is Blackberry Back?
In the span of about five years, BlackBerry (BBRY) rose to the peak of the US mobile phone market and then crashed to the bottom. Before 2011, BlackBerry held a larger percentage of the global market share for mobile phones than both Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOG). In fact, for FY 2009, BlackBerry held 50% of the global market share for smartphones.
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Creative Destruction
One of the more interesting ideas to come out of economic and business literature is that of “creative destruction,” which is closely related to the concept of “disruptive innovation.” Distilled down to its most basic form, “creative destruction” is the concept that something new, whether a technology, manufacturing process, or business practice, can disrupt the established market and upset the market power of entrenched companies.
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