This article suggests that BB lost because it did not focus on the consumer soon enough. I'm going to completely disagree and argue that even if they had done t

This article suggests that BB lost because it did not focus on the consumer soon enough. I'm going to completely disagree and argue that even if they had done this, they would still be dying now. Their fate would have been the same had they made consumer friendly phones in 2008. In 2008 I believed android would dominate the smartphone market. This was even before the first android phone was brought to market. Most consumers had not even heard of android back then and the iPhone was quickly gaining market share. Why did I think this back then? What killed BB is, at core, the result of Geography. It is not only the fate of societies, a la Jared Diamond, but the fates of tech companies that geography can influence. In 2008, I was living in northern California and you could sense the amount of developer interest in android. What android did and BB couldn't do (or really try) was to win over developers. Many were upset at Apple's process for publishing apps. Google did everything to address those concerns. Instead of winning over consumers first, android won over the developers who then made the apps to bring those consumers. BB was just too far away and too out of touch to see any of this. The world is not flat. Place matters. If it were as simple as focusing on consumers, why did Nokia lose despite doing this all along? -Geography! And why did android win despite not initially focusing on consumers? (the G1 was a crappy phone). The winners (android and IOS) won because they're located in Silicon valley where most of the best developers are. The losers (Nok, RIMM) lost because they weren't.