Gene Marks’ trots out the dead corpse of an idea that catering to business customers, with gadgets and corporate services, is the long-term future for tech companies. So he thinks Google will fail because they’re expending too much effort targeting consumers. And while they’re distracted Microsoft will destroy them because the upcoming Surface will be nice for consumers but be a god-send for businesses.

The big problems with this argument are:

• An entire movement called “The Consumerization of IT” – the most successful devices right now are those that resonate for consumers firstly, and these people are either bringing their personal gadgets into work or demanding them from their corporate IT staff. This is a widely accepted fact.
• Specialized software and services that cater to businesses are no longer essential. Although Google Docs hasn’t given Office any major competition, there are myriad cloud services that sync my documents to my laptop, iPad and phone – all of which work for business or personal stuff. Why would we need a separate “corporate-centric” version of these services?

But the biggest reason this theory is DOA? The prime example of a company that focuses more heavily on the corporate market in the tech product and services space is RIM. It was recently estimated by comScore that The BlackBerry, once an essential tool for “serious” business people, has now slipped below 10% market share. And they repeated this same platitude all of the way to the bottom.