The raise and fall of market leaders

[viking60]

Remember Sony Walkman? Kodak digital camera? Facit? Nokia? Smith & Wesson? Blockbuster? They were all huge market leaders on the verge of monopoly. Sony walkman was uniqe and made us carry music with us in 1979 and people were virtually sleeping in line to get their hands on one. Sony sold over 200 million Walkmans. The sales sky rocketed, and Sony even managed to make a followup with Discman. Sony created the kind of customer loyalty that Apple is famous for today. And the Walkman was clearly a leading technology from Sony. Sony's fall down can clearly be dated to the 23rd of October 2001 when a skinny and determined person presented a new product called iPod. And the name was MP3. Kodaks fall down was the most ironic one. They were innovative and invented the digital Camera and presented it in 1975, but the 100 year old business from film roles was to lucrative, so they stuck to it and were overtaken by everybody else.. Talk about a Kodak moment! Facit was a mechanic calculator and world dominant. In the peek year of 1971 the compant had representaions in 100 countries. In the same year the Japanese launched the electronic calculator. And that pretty much erased the company over night. Nokia did simply rest on their old successes for too long. It was the worlds largest company - they are never going to get there again.

Smith & Wesson were out done by Glock. Glock was prefered by the Police and Hollywood. Glock was an Austrian (Not related to Arnold ) and used to make bathroom equipment. S&W must have been fast asleep. Blockbuster held on to their physical videos for to long and were crushed by the Internet. The company went bankrupt in 2010. So why am I telling you this? Because I am a fan of Dinosaurs? No, the common component in all these stories is that Innovation rarely comes from market leaders. The instinctive reaction of a market leaders is to protect the product that has given the market share. I could go on with Polaroid, the Beeper, Atari, Palm Pilot...... Now let me see....who is the market leader in the OS business.....