W.I.T. #51 - What Could Be the Next Blackberry?
Companies with a seemingly insurmountable advantage over their competitors don’t always stay in the lead.
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VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
John Scherer:
When is the last time you used your BlackBerry to check email? That's what I'm thinking about.
I came across a really interesting article recently, just talking about the magnificent seven companies, you know, Apple and Google's parent, Alphabet and Facebook and those, and just how powerful full they are and the idea of, well, do they stifle competition because they're so big and so successful and is this a problem? Right. How worried do we need to be about that? And we've talked a little bit before about how this is not unprecedented to have a handful of companies really driving the market. But this piece I thought was really interesting and they use some history.
Actually, I've been reading another book on some of the history of the markets and they talked about the palm pilot when that first came out in the early, early two thousands. And I hadn't thought about palm Pilot in forever. I thought, oh yeah, that's right. With that stylus you could press on there and keep your calendar and stuff. What a deal, right?
And then the BlackBerry came out right back in the early 2000s as well. And for all of us of a certain age, I mean, I suspect that most of us had some form of that, right? And that was the deal. Those big bricks with a full computer or full keyboard on it, right, where we could type all those things out. I thought, holy mackerel, life is good, right? And it's interesting to me as I read this article here, I'll pull up a graphic on it that going back, I feel like it was a long time ago, but it was really when the last 15 years, BlackBerry was still the dominant place in the business world, especially where you're getting your email and your connectivity, right? Take a look at that chart. Now here, this chart is twelve month trailing sales per share, right? So it's not market share or other things, but still the idea of you take a look back as we go through it was 2010, 2011, 2012, where BlackBerry's sales per share were growing, right? I mean, we're talking just over a decade ago, right? Maybe a dozen years ago, not 20 years ago like it feels like, right? And you can see on the chart here where things came in, the iPhone came in middle of seven, Android a year later.
And look what happened to BlackBerry's sales per share up after those companies. Right, after those companies came out with the Android phone and the iPhone, right after that, the scale skyrocketed until of course, they didn't. Right? And we all know how that story plays out.
And I just think this is a really interesting graphic of number one, taking a look at just how recently BlackBerry was a dominant play, right? It seems like a lifetime ago and it was barely a decade, decade ago, decade and a half. Number two, look at where those new technologies came out. iPhone, revolutionized things, right? Android, was it the next year that BlackBerry tipped over? No, two years, no, three, like three, four, five years. And BlackBerry is still the dominant force in that. Right? So as we look at those big companies now, that magnificent seven, what other technology, what other innovation is out there right now that we don't quite even know is going to take over those things, right. Just really interesting to think about that from a perspective standpoint. And that's what I wanted to share with you all today here.
So that's what I'm thinking about. As always, I'm interested in knowing what you're thinking about. If you're watching this on YouTube, drop a comment in the comment box or shoot me an email directly. And as always, thanks for watching.
John Scherer CFP® is a fee-only certified financial planner based in Middleton, Wisconsin. John has over 20 years of experience advising clients on personal tax, investment, and financial planning. You can reach him by email at john@trinfin.com.