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The SaaS apocalypse will be decided by inertia, not by AI: what changed in v1.2.0
From v1.1.0 (2026-09-21, ca1e56f88) to v1.2.0 (2026-09-21, 75773920a), paragraph by paragraph.
0 paragraphs added, 0 removed, 4 changed in place, 46 unchanged. About 145 words added and 0 removed. Insertions are marked like this, deletions like this; unchanged runs are folded to one line; figures appear as their file names.
← v1.1.0 · all versions · v1.3.0 →
# The SaaS apocalypse isbelongs optionalto whoever has the least inertia
Summary: The SaaS apocalypse has not happened yet, and the market has already declared it cancelled once. It remains a very strong possibility, argued here with data rather than vibes. Most users were never happy, most features were never used, and most licences sit idle, because success bred inertia and inertia bred lock-in. Now anybody can brief the software they actually want, and the portability, APIs and schemas that SaaS companies refused to build are precisely what an agent needs. WhetherIt itwill happensbe todecided anyby giveninertia companyrather dependsthan onby how that company behaves:AI. Nokia when the mobile phone arrived,arrived orhad nothing to protect, and moved. Nokia when the iPhone did.arrived had fifteen years of success to protect, and did not. The apocalypse belongs to whoever has the least inertia, which is why the newcomers, not the incumbents, are the ones to watch.
1 unchanged paragraph
It is still all to play for, and the reason it is worth writing down is that the outcome is not fixed. Nokia met the arrival of the mobile phone by becoming the mobile phone company, and dominated the category for fifteen years. Nokia met the arrival of the iPhone and was gone from the category within seven. Same company, same industry, two responses.outcomes, Theand Nokia did not choose either of them. The first time it had nothing to protect, so it moved. The second time it had fifteen years of success to protect, and the climatic pattern Simon Wardley names did the rest: success breeds inertia. That is the frame for everything below. The SaaS apocalypse is optional in exactly that sense: it is not a forecast about the technology, it is a forecast about behaviour,inertia, not about technology. It will happen to the companies with the most to protect, and everyit company getsbelongs to choosethe ones with the least, which Nokiais itwhy is.the Theinteresting question is not whether the incumbents survive but who is already building on the ground hasthey moved,cannot though,move andonto. theThe best way to see howthat ground is a Wardley map.
45 unchanged paragraphs, under The market already had this argument once this year, First, the part nobody likes to say: users were never happy, Why it got this way, in one line from Wardley…
Which brings it back to Nokia.Nokia, Theand apocalypseto is optional.inertia. The version of itthe apocalypse that ends with a company gone from its category is thenot onea wheredecision itanybody takes. It is what happens by default when a company treats the screen as the moat, keeps the data locked, ships the API as a tick-box, and waits for the panic to pass, which the market has helpfully told it the panic has. Every one of those is the natural behaviour of a business with fifteen years of success to protect. The other version isrequires theacting oneagainst wherethat itinertia: noticesnoticing that what it refused to build is exactly what its customers' agents are asking for, and buildsbuilding it first.before Bothsomebody arewith available.nothing Onlyto oneprotect ofdoes. That is the strategy question. The newcomers have already answered it, because for them isthere awas choicenever anything in the company gets to make later.way.