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Not going to argue your point about products, but from a financial standpoint, RIMM/Blackberry's peak market cap was about $81 billion in 2008. Nortel's peak w

Not going to argue your point about products, but from a financial standpoint, RIMM/Blackberry's peak market cap was about $81 billion in 2008. Nortel's peak was $283 billion in 2000. Nortel was huge. Of course, the market was in a huge bubble at the time.

adventured 6y ago
Nortel also got a bit larger than RIM by sales. Nortel's peak was $22.2 billion in fiscal year 2000, with $1.7b in operating income. RIM peaked at $19.9 billion in sales in 2011. Amazingly they tripled in size from $6b in sales in 2008, in just three years. Then lost 85% of their sales in another four years after that.
- magicnubs 6y ago
  > Amazingly they tripled in size from $6b in sales in 2008, in just three years. Then lost 85% of their sales in another four years after that. I assume this is due to the advent of touchscreen phones. Around when people were getting used to the idea that mobile phones could be used for more than just making calls, touchscreens could be buggy/laggy and there wasn't haptic feedback or any sort of attempt at recreating the physical sensation of typing. RIM doubled down on physical keyboards, and Blackberrys had great ones (I could type much faster on my Blackberry Bold than on an iPhone at the time) and they already had productivity/utility apps and such since they were really PDAs. But the gradually improving touchscreen typing experience, combined with the increased utility of being able to put the keyboard away when you didn't need it, spelled the death of physical keyboard phones not long after.
sandworm101 6y ago
Market cap is a measurement of how other people, stockholders, think of your company. It means little on the ground. A stock can double, or half, overnight. That doesn't mean the company is suddenly double or half its former size.
- smabie 6y ago
  Sure, but what's a better metric of the size of a company? Employees?
  - hylaride 6y ago
    Gross revenue and/or profit.
    - heisbsissi 6y ago
      The way I think companies should be valued is superior to your proposal.

adventured 6y ago

Nortel also got a bit larger than RIM by sales. Nortel's peak was $22.2 billion in fiscal year 2000, with $1.7b in operating income. RIM peaked at $19.9 billion in sales in 2011. Amazingly they tripled in size from $6b in sales in 2008, in just three years. Then lost 85% of their sales in another four years after that.

magicnubs 6y ago
> Amazingly they tripled in size from $6b in sales in 2008, in just three years. Then lost 85% of their sales in another four years after that. I assume this is due to the advent of touchscreen phones. Around when people were getting used to the idea that mobile phones could be used for more than just making calls, touchscreens could be buggy/laggy and there wasn't haptic feedback or any sort of attempt at recreating the physical sensation of typing. RIM doubled down on physical keyboards, and Blackberrys had great ones (I could type much faster on my Blackberry Bold than on an iPhone at the time) and they already had productivity/utility apps and such since they were really PDAs. But the gradually improving touchscreen typing experience, combined with the increased utility of being able to put the keyboard away when you didn't need it, spelled the death of physical keyboard phones not long after.

sandworm101 6y ago

Market cap is a measurement of how other people, stockholders, think of your company. It means little on the ground. A stock can double, or half, overnight. That doesn't mean the company is suddenly double or half its former size.

smabie 6y ago
Sure, but what's a better metric of the size of a company? Employees?
- hylaride 6y ago
  Gross revenue and/or profit.
  - heisbsissi 6y ago
    The way I think companies should be valued is superior to your proposal.