Shopping mall foot traffic

BlackBerry's global smartphone share collapsing as American shopping-mall foot traffic also falls. Two completely unrelated 2007-2016 trajectories on the same downward path. The corporate Treo and the suburban food court, both retiring on the same schedule.

BlackBerry's global smartphone market share collapsed from about 20 percent in 2007 to under 1 percent by 2016 as iPhone and Android replaced the QWERTY-keyboard default. US shopping-mall foot traffic declined steadily across the same window as e-commerce grew and anchor-store closures accelerated. Two completely unrelated declines sharing a window because the same nine years saw both a smartphone incumbent collapse and a physical-retail format lose its centrality.

Two completely unrelated American institutions retreated together. Different categories, same era of retirement.