Who has been proven wrong are all the pundits who proclaimed their monopolies were unstoppable.

Other giant companies have fallen as well. RCA, Xerox, GE, Kodak, on and on.

The reasons are well known. They become bureaucratic, wasteful and ossified, and become unable to adapt to a changing marketplace.

I've seen this play out again and again and again in my lifetime.

The phone carriers. They charged a fortune for data, restricted useful features on your phone (I remember one model which wouldn't play non-DRMed music because they wanted to boost their revenue), and things like mobile apps were held back by the way the carriers would look at your finances and decide how much to charge just for the privilege of being listed. When Qualcomm was getting started with BREW we looked into it for a few customers but even a modest business would get something like the _MINIMUM_ $50k listing fee for each carrier, adjusted up based on your perceived ability to pay, and they wanted more than 30% of the app pricing, too.

AT&T