[cmrdporcupine]

IBM got out of selling ThinkPads long before Apple had any kind of dominance in the high-end laptop market.

Arguably they got out of it because there was no such thing as high-end consumer PC hardware, the margins were low, competition fierce, and they didn't want to play in the low-margin discount market.

Arguably the ThinkPad could have been a success as a high end business laptop. I think under Lenovo's stewardship it has languished and become a typical cheap Asian-manufacturer product of 500 SKUs, all slightly different, with quality on a downward curve.

On the other hand the fate of RIM/Blackberry shows there isn't much of a market for a 'business' device that is separate from a high-end 'consumer' device. The latter wins over the former.

[_red]

One quibble about RIM/BB.

The thing is they didn't at all continue on their "business device" strategy, they got suckered into trying to match Apple - they tried going touchscreen crazy and it cost them their core market.

In hindsight, not many people will understand this, but their greatest blunder was trying to charge / keep BES as a revenue product.

They should've given it away far and wide, made it open, encouraged people to customize it.

Imagine if there was a robust, easy to use, free version of BES available? How many business would be using it (>50%)

That would've kept RIM in the game for far longer, but they were short sighted and stupid.