One day, your gadget is the future an indispensible tool of business or the
pinnacle of entertainment. The next its a Rolodex, an awkward anachronism
sitting on dusty thrift store shelves waiting to be used as a prop in some
dinner theater production of Glengarry Glen Ross . Technologys forward march is
sometimes nostalgic retro is a powerful marketing banner, a fact not lost on
Motorola Mobility (NYSE: MMI ) and its new Droid RAZR smartphone but it never
is sentimental. "Outdated" might as well mean "unprofitable." As Apple s
(NASDAQ: AAPL ) iPad cuts into PC sales and Google s (NASDAQ: GOOG ) Android
operating system comes to further define the mobile device businesses of Samsung
(PINK: SSNLF ), HTC and many others, were taking a look at what gadgets are
getting killed off by contemporary giants. By the time 2015 rolls around, expect
to see these gadgets joining the Rolodex on that dusty thrift store shelf.
Research In Motion BlackBerry Research In Motions (NASDAQ: RIMM ) BlackBerry
line, once the face of the entire smartphone industry, already is on life
support. BlackBerrys accounted for nearly 19% of the global smartphone market in
2010 a grip thats shrunk to just below 12% as of the second quarter in 2011 .
The remaining BlackBerry users out there are jumping ship as well. An UBS report
released in September found that RIM retains only 33% of BlackBerry users when
those consumers upgrade their phones down from 62% in early 2010. That number
should shrink even further given the recent global outage of numerous BlackBerry
services . While RIM isnt giving up the BlackBerry ghost yet the company
unveiled its next-generation operating system on Tuesday the rate at which
consumers are abandoning the technology means the future is grim. If the
BlackBerry survives into 2015, it will be as part of another companys patent
portfolio .
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