Blackberry

[tomh009]

On the other hand, it may not matter. People sometimes prefer things that are objectively worse in some ways because they are better in some other ways.

And sometimes the company with the objectively superior technology loses out to competitors with better marketing, e.g. Sony Beta vs everyone else with VHS.

I agree that good marketing often trumps good technology.

But for Betamax, like IBM's Micro Channel (as used in the PS/2) vs ISA Bus, it was really a question of a dominant player trying to push a proprietary standard (Betamax, Micro Channel) and not being able to compete with a relatively open industry standard (VHS, ISA) embraced by a majority of the industry. Many more examples abound in the technology industry.