When one company appears to permanently own an entire industry but
eventually gets pushed aside by
competitors in a shocking, unforeseeable manner. The term references the
BlackBerry Company, one of the early originators of smart mobile devices. BlackBerry users worldwide grew from 534,000 in 2003 to an all-time high of 80 million in 2012. It has since plummeted to only 11 million users (0.003% of the global market) while Apple iPhone and Samsung mobile devices users have soared to 2 billion people (56% of the global market).