There was a time when buying a smartphone meant choosing between BlackBerry, Symbian and Windows Mobile.
That sounds strange now because the smartphone market has become almost binary. You either use iPhone or Android. But in the mid to late 2000s, the future was much less obvious.
BlackBerry looked like the serious choice. It had physical keyboards, push email and a reputation for being the phone for business users. For a while, carrying a BlackBerry almost felt like carrying a small piece of corporate status in your pocket.
Symbian was everywhere too, especially through Nokia. It powered an enormous range of phones and, at its peak, felt almost impossible to dislodge. Nokia had scale, distribution and loyal users. The problem was that Symbian increasingly felt like software designed for a different era while the smartphone itself was changing very quickly.
Then there was Windows Mobile.
Before “Windows Phone” became the cleaner, more modern attempt, Windows Mobile tried to bring the desktop PC experience into a tiny screen. It had Start menus, stylus-driven interfaces and a surprisingly capable ecosystem for power users. At the time, that seemed logical. If people already knew Windows, why not shrink it into a phone?
Then the rules changed.
The iPhone showed that smartphones did not need to feel like miniature computers. They could feel like something new. Android followed with a more open model that spread across many hardware manufacturers. Suddenly the things that once looked important, physical keyboards, styluses and desktop-like interfaces, started to feel old.
What is interesting is that BlackBerry, Symbian and Windows Mobile did not disappear because they were completely useless.
They disappeared because the definition of a good smartphone changed faster than they could adapt.
The smartphone stopped being mainly about email and productivity. It became a camera, music player, web browser, social device, navigation system, game console and eventually the centre of everyday digital life.
App ecosystems became more important than keyboards. Touch became more important than menus. Developer support became more important than installed base.
Looking back, the old smartphone war is a useful reminder that technology leadership can disappear surprisingly quickly.
Being dominant today does not guarantee relevance tomorrow.
The companies that win are often not the ones with the biggest head start. They are the ones that recognise when the rules of the market have changed.