[spiralpolitik]

The dot com bust wiped out their hardware sales as you could pick up almost new top of the range Sun hardware at auction. They never really recovered from that, despite a couple of good quarters in the mid 00s.

I think Sun tried to pivot but they couldn't put together a coherent strategy together. Some of their acquisitions were all over the place. Scott McNealy probably stuck around longer than he should have.

Contrast with Apple who had a fairly clear strategy of doubling down on the Mac and then building synergy with other products (like the iPod) to grow.