The A380 made perfect sense ten years ago when it looked like airlines would be able to increase both yield and loads in a slot-constrained world. That was the paper A380, not the aircraft which is in service today.
That Airbus wasn't able to deliver the promised aeroplane is not the fault of the people who ordered it exactly. Perhaps they did buy into Airbus' view of the future, but it was a pretty compelling argument back then. Once you accept the premise that capacity is king for your longest routes, then the A380/A330 combo starts to make more sense than the 747/777 solution.
I am a rabid Qantas management hater, but in this instance I don't think they were wrong, initially. They were and are wrong to (uniquely) eschew the 777 since it became apparent that the aeroplane, the airline and the world did not turn out as expected.
If Qantas had the network and traffic that we had expected to have the A380 would of course be less of a disaster. Qantas now is, like Joyce, miniscule.
Finally...the author of that piece neglected to mention two additional reasons for a null resale market: the upper deck is not strong enough to convert the aircraft into a freighter. So that traditional secondary demand is also missing from the market, and,
2. The infrastructure is missing from the part of the world where old aircraft typically get sold.
He also seems to ignore the fact that EK seems to be content with the aeroplane: they are replacing the 777 more and more on many capacity constrained routes, just as Airbus predicted.