Customers don't buy technology, they buy ways to meet their needs. What need was the Blackberry meeting? What need is the iPad meeting? From the article,

Customers don't buy technology, they buy ways to meet their needs. What need was the Blackberry meeting? What need is the iPad meeting? From the article, it sounds like the Blackberry is being disrupted by the iPad - but I'm not sure it fits. A disruption is where the disruptive product is initially not good enough for the incumbents' customers' needs, and it has to go elsewhere and get started with other, less demanding customers, who value it for being cheaper, more convenient or simpler. Then, the disruption gradually improves til it is good enough for the incumbents' customers. At which point, it's game over for the incumbent. I'm not sure that the iPad fits this bill. It depends on the needs of the Blackberry's customers, and what they were trying to get done with it. It's also probably important to see the iPad not as standalone, but as "iPad+AppStore"; and as an extension of the iPhone, since it can run iPhone apps. EDIT now I'm thinking that the Blackberry was a special-purpose solution (for the enterprise), and the iPad is a general-purpose solution. As soon as the iPad can also do what the Blackberry does, customers will switch. The odd thing is that the iPad/iPhone wasn't cheaper, more convenient or simpler - it was mainly just more general. Maybe more convenient, in being more usable. EDIT2 The crucial innovation of the iPhone was adding a pointing device (multi-touch - the fact that it's multi is a nice extra) and a large screen. Before then, there was no mouse-like input device. Adding it was comparable to going from the Apple IIe to the Macintosh; or DOS to windows. It made the device easier to use - the crucial about this is not that it was less tedious, but that it became accessible to a new group of users, who previously could not use it. For smartphones, these people simply weren't customers before. They wouldn't have bought a Blackberry. In other words, the iPhone was actually more convenient than the Blackberry - convenience that enabled it to target non-consumption. At this point, the iPhone still wasn't good enough for Blackberry users, because it didn't have exchange integration, so RIM wasn't threatened. But when integration was added, it was good enough, and game over for RIM.