I think focusing on selling to other companies is a difficult trap to get out of. After the first sale companies can be milked for an extended period for support contracts / upgrades. Innovation is not really needed and growth / profit are an easy to understand process. You can even make money by bribing middle managers (see: drug companies for an example of this).
However, individuals require far more bang for the buck. So the margins tend to be far smaller and you need to sell to large numbers of people constantly to keep up.
At the same time selling to companies tends to focus on boring products so most of your innovative people tend to leave. It's not exactly a binary choice, but companies like AT&T often go from selling to individuals, to making money from companies, to making money from the government. In the end the quality of your competition tends to drop the closer you are to working for the government which is why I think it's a death spiral. Overtime the company becomes unable to deal with change and the next round of innovative companies tend to disrupt them.
PS: Which is not to say old companies like GM can't sell products to customers it's just they stop being able to make much money doing so unless they can leverage a monopoly.
However, individuals require far more bang for the buck. So the margins tend to be far smaller and you need to sell to large numbers of people constantly to keep up.
At the same time selling to companies tends to focus on boring products so most of your innovative people tend to leave. It's not exactly a binary choice, but companies like AT&T often go from selling to individuals, to making money from companies, to making money from the government. In the end the quality of your competition tends to drop the closer you are to working for the government which is why I think it's a death spiral. Overtime the company becomes unable to deal with change and the next round of innovative companies tend to disrupt them.
PS: Which is not to say old companies like GM can't sell products to customers it's just they stop being able to make much money doing so unless they can leverage a monopoly.