Is Apple about to get BlackBerry'd?

In 2007, RIM was riding high: It had captured key business and government markets, profits were up 73%, and while a new competitor were soaking up some good press, the competitions' phones were all worse in significant ways that seemed impossible to overcome. A few years later, it would all come crashing down, but even in 2007 the company's fate was being sealed.

Now, some wonder if the same might be true for Apple.

The recent round of discussion was kicked off by iOS developer and commentator Marco Arment, who wrote that he was worried that, if Google's vision for the future, one in which AI bots are increasingly important, is correct, Apple is likely to be in a tough spot:

I covered BlackBerry (then RIM) starting in 2007 until about 2012, including interview the then-chief executive and other key leaders, as well as people up and down the BlackBerry ecosystem. Right now, machine learning, as powerful as it is, doesn't yet feel the same as the tide that would rework the computing landscape.

For one, I haven't seen the end-user side clamoring for smarter chatbots or assistants: Yes, Amazon Alexa appears to be selling OK, but not anything close to the frenzy of enthusiasm of the early iPhones. And with Amazon, Google, Microsoft, AND Facebook all making massive bets on the technology, it seems less like massive disruption going on and more like technology giants taking out insurance policies against one potential form of massive disruption (notice how many of those same companies are also making huge bets on VR and augment reality).

Nowhere is this more true than at Microsoft, which was largely cut out of the mobile platform wars and now sees AI and messaging as a way to leapfrog back into the game. 

But I still think that there are parallels between BlackBerry and Apple worth paying attention to. I have no doubt that AI and machine learning will radically rework the way which humans and machines interact, it's just a matter of when and how.