An inspired picture of Blackberry's dying inspiration

The New York Times has a splendid example of an infographics this weekend, showing the rise and fall of the Blackberry.

Notice the inspired touch of the black circles to trace the outline of Blackberry's market share. They are a guide to experiencing the chart.

I wish they had put the Palm section above Blackberry. In an area chart, the only clean section is the bottom section in which the market share is not cumulated. Given the focus on Blackberry, it's a pity readers have to perform subtractions to tease out the shares.

I also wonder if the black circles should contain Blackberry's market share rather than the year labels.

But I enjoyed this chart. Thanks for producing it.

 

Comments

[Ken]

I remember in 2006 arranging to meet with someone at a conference and finding that they had a Blackberry which allowed them to reply to my e-mails. Seemed exciting then.

The main message of this is how once someone has a better technology, it is only a matter of years before you're dead, unless there is someone of locking your product into the marketplace.

[Aleksey Nozdryn-Plotnicki]

Tempting to accuse them of deliberately putting Palm below in order to make the Blackberry story look worse than it is.

[Vikram Kapoor]

Subtractions for figuring out the market shares? The leftmost shares are 32%, 47% and 22%, proportional to the lengths of the 3 options.