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Much press surrounds the possible takeover of Blackberry by a partnership between Nokia and Microsoft. As this article from Fierce Wireless makes clear, the three companies meet frequently to discuss ways to cooperate. I imagine the agenda for such meetings must be:
- Apple's new product initiatives (which rumors should we believe)
- Amazon's new tablet initiatives (and are they coming to market with a phone)
- Google's new initiatives in smartphones, tablets and the Android operating system
If time permits, they read a chapter from one of Clayton Christensen's books on disruptive innovation and wonder how it happened that Blackberry, Microsoft and Nokia have been disrupted after being market leaders. The other topic that might be a discussion item is what Google will do with the acquired Motorola phone business.
I actually think that Blackberry may rise from the dust, provided that consumer buying behavior does not yet have too much affect on enterprise equipment decisions (a big "if"). Microsoft is toast (except as a gaming company) and Nokia was toast the day they agreed to use the Windows mobile OS on their phones and largely ceded control of the key features of the phones to Redmond.
Wonder if there is a record for most market capitalization lost to disruptive innovation. These three companies all have to be contenders for the record which is probably still to be determined.
