Al Ries, marketing guru, noted that mature markets tend to be dominated by 2 giants, with miscellaneous smaller players. Think Coke/Pepsi. McDonald's/KFC. Windows/Mac.
The phone market is going to be iPhone/antiPhone. Not that someone's actually going to market a phone under that name. What I mean is that a challenger will emerge, that will be to iPhone in the phone market, what Mac is to Windows, in the consumer computing market. (And it looks like Android's going to be it.)
iPhone, antiPhone, plus miscellaneous others
BlackBerry had a surprisingly good run of the market, but they don't iterate fast enough, in my opinion. It seems like they're trying to out-BlackBerry the iPhone - doing what they've always done, but better. It's just a matter of time, if they don't adapt.
I remember the CEO of RIM mocking the iPhone's onscreen keyboard, saying that BlackBerry would "never" release a phone without a physical keyboard, because it was "proven" that consumers want a physical keyboard. And then, after the iPhone was released, they came out with a BlackBerry - you guessed it - without a physical keyboard.
I doubt that's what BlackBerry users want, anyway. And the fact that form factor was never reiterated would seem to bear out my hunch. But it was significant, in that it seems to indicate that RIM doesn't really know where to go next. "Email anytime, anywhere" is no longer a compelling reason to get a BB - not when others are doing it comparatively well. iPhone owns the mobile internet. Android owns mobile open source. BB used to own mobile email.
It's going to be an interesting near future.
