The Washington Post recently ran an article by Andrea Peterson on RIM (now BlackBerry), with a chart they called “The decline of blackberry in one chart”. But more than the story of BlackBerry this chart rang home for me the enormous dynamics of a relative new industry.
As their chart showed the four mobile vendors that together had about hundred percent market share in 2005 barely managed to hold on to 20% by 2013. In only eight years they went from hero to zero, and were replaced by platforms that were introduced in 2007 (Apple) and 2009 (Android). I don’t cover mobile platforms so see this data mainly as a consumer, but it did make me wonder about the cloud market.
The mobile market in 2005 was by no stretch of imagination a startup market, I was on my third cellphone, after having enjoyed a car bound phone (car bound because it took up about half the boot) for about 4 years. The vendors were established, companies were handing out cellphones to most of their road warriors. Something that actually started in Europe – my US colleagues initially were juggling company provided calling cards and dialing codes – but by 2005 this was pretty much a global movement. A movement that felt more mature, established and business as usual as today’s cloud market.