[thombat]

An apposite war story from Nokia, just about the time the iPhone entered the market: our Lords and Masters had decided that internal competition would be a good thing, so smartphones were divided into business, entertainment, and mass market divisions with each bidding for exclusive access to the components being delivered by the the R&D and productisation teams. So it was that barcode readers ended up with "business" (use case: scan a business card) and auto focus cameras with "entertainment" (use case: selfie). With of course the result that the business phone needed an A4-sized business card held at arm's length. This absurd "strategy", probably sold in by a gaggle of consultants, was first celebrated then subject to extensive soul-searching and some tedious "lessons learned" enquiries that resulted in long PowerPoints filed carefully in NUL, rather than perhaps simply resolving next time to ask some small child working in the front line just what they thought of the Emperor's splendid new attire...