# The SaaS apocalypse will be decided by inertia, not by AI: what changed in v1.3.0, sgit.ai > The changes to the article "The SaaS apocalypse will be decided by inertia, not by AI" in v1.3.0, paragraph by paragraph. *Source: · sgit.ai v0.7.40 · this file is generated from the same content as the page, so the two cannot drift. Every page on this site has a `.md` twin; internal links below point at them.* --- [Home](../../../index.md) / [Articles](../../index.md) / [The SaaS apocalypse will be decided by inertia, not by AI](../../saas-apocalypse-decided-by-inertia-not-by-ai.md) / [Versions](../saas-apocalypse-decided-by-inertia-not-by-ai.md) / v1.3.0 # The SaaS apocalypse will be decided by inertia, not by AI: what changed in v1.3.0 From v1.2.0 (2026-09-21, `75773920a`) to v1.3.0 (2026-09-21, `c6819b400`), paragraph by paragraph. 1 paragraph added, 0 removed, 5 changed in place, 45 unchanged. About 264 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. [← v1.2.0](v1.2.0.md) · [all versions](../saas-apocalypse-decided-by-inertia-not-by-ai.md) · [v1.4.0 →](v1.4.0.md) # The SaaS apocalypse belongswilltobewhoeverdecidedhasbytheinertia,leastnotinertiaby AI 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. It will be decided by inertiainertia,rather thannot by AI.AI, because AI is available to both sides: the incumbents have the same models as the newcomers, plus more data, more engineers and more money, and if the technology were the deciding factor they would already have won. Nokia when the mobile phone arrived had nothing to protect, and moved. Nokia when the iPhone arrived had fifteen years of success to protect, and did not. TheWhichapocalypsesidebelongsof that path each SaaS provider ends up on will be settled by where it sits on the evolution axis and how much it has to whoever has the least inertia,protect, 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 outcomes, and 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.below, and it is why the title says what it says. **AI is not the deciding factor, because AI is available to both sides.** The incumbents have the same models the newcomers have, plus more data to point them at, more engineers and more money. If the technology decided this, they would already have won, and two and a half years in they have not. What decides it is inertia: where a company sits on the evolution axis, and how much past success it has to protect. The SaaS apocalypse is a forecast about inertia, not about technology.that. It will happen to the companies with the most to protect, and it belongs to the ones with the least, which is why the interesting question is not whether the incumbents survive but who is already building on the ground they cannot move onto. The best way to see that ground is a Wardley map. 5 unchanged paragraphs, under The market already had this argument once this year Notice, too, what both sides of that argument took for granted: that the question was about AI. The panic said AI would hollow out SaaS. The recovery said AI would not. Both were staring at the wrong variable. The same models were available to the largest incumbent and to a two-person company on the day the plug-ins shipped, and they still are. What differed between them was not the technology. It was what each had to protect. 22 unchanged paragraphs, under First, the part nobody likes to say: users were never happy, Why it got this way, in one line from Wardley, Everybody was already vibe coding, just very slowly… Which is why the obvious objection does not hold. *If shipping good software were just a matter of investing in the product and spending money, surely these companies would have built amazing software by now.* They have the money. They have the same AI as everybody else, and more data to point it at. They have not built it. We are two and a half years into the generative AI shift and we still do not see the level of innovation from incumbents that you would expect if theythecouldtechnologypullwereittheoff.constraint. It is not. The constraint was never the budget.budget, and it is not the models. It was the handover between explorers, villagers and town planners that these companies never built, the split between the people who find things, the people who make them solid and the people who run them at scale. 17 unchanged paragraphs, under The irony, which is the whole article in one paragraph, The mistake, and where the money actually is, Strip the UI and see what is left… Which brings it back to Nokia, and to inertia. The version of the apocalypse that ends with a company gone from its category is not a decision anybody 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 requires acting against that inertia: noticing that what it refused to build is exactly what its customers' agents are asking for, and building it before somebody with nothing to protect does. That is the strategy question.question, and it is not a question about AI, which both sides have. It is a question about inertia, which only one side has. The newcomers have already answered it, because for them there was never anything in the way. [← v1.2.0](v1.2.0.md) · [all versions](../saas-apocalypse-decided-by-inertia-not-by-ai.md) · [v1.4.0 →](v1.4.0.md) --- *[Site index for agents](../../../llms.txt) · [HTML version](https://newsroom.sgit.ai/articles/versions/saas-apocalypse-decided-by-inertia-not-by-ai/v1.3.0.html)*