How the Blackberry Became Indispensable and Disappeared

Back in the 1990s, long before the pandemic Remote work has become the new normalA few tech geeks at a Canadian company called Research In Motion, working out of a cramped office space in Waterloo, Ontario, under the leadership of founder Michael Lazaridis and CEO Jim Varsily, found this It’s as good as inventing the concept.

Right around the turn of the century, the company created the world’s smallest portable e-mail device, an Internet-enabled handheld with a full keyboard.

They soon found a way to turn it into a mobile phone, and in 2002 came the BlackBerry, the world’s first true smartphone.

“There’s clearly been a huge appetite for BlackBerry. BlackBerry has opened the door,” said Matt Johnson, director of BlackBerry. A film that tells the story of the rise and fall of a tech giantopens in theaters on Friday — told the Post.

“Others were trying to run email on their phones at the same time, but their product wasn’t robust.”

The cutting-edge technology quickly took the world by storm, earning it the nickname “CrackBerry.” But as remarkable as the device’s game-changing nature is, RIM’s heads Barsily (Glenn Howerton) and Lazaridis (Jay Baruchel) have certainly made big profits from their creations. You have proven yourself to be a very smart entrepreneur.

BlackBerry’s business-forward strategy initially paid off.

“BlackBerry sells devices to individual users, who sign a contract with a local carrier to access the network. We will charge,” said Johnson, who plays RIM co-founder Douglas Flegin in the film.

“Imagine you had to pay a special iPhone fee to use an iPhone. They were making a lot of money renting network space to users.”

From its arrival on the market in the early 2000s until it was devastated by Steve Jobs and Apple’s iPhone in 2007, BlackBerry was the pinnacle of the tech crop. Controls a whopping half of the smartphone market 20% in the US and 20% globally. RIM’s market value peaked at $230 per share.

This obsession with technology quickly caught on with bold people like President Barack Obama, Anna Wintour, Sarah Jessica Parker and Katy Perry, who said they tried BlackBerry and loved it.

But while BlackBerry products were undeniably top-of-the-line, there were plenty of competitors, starting with PalmPilot’s parent company Palm, who endorsed celebrities like Michael Jordan and Claudia Schiffer.

According to Johnson, Palm was hungry for a taste of BlackBerry — even before the blockbuster phone hit the market, CEO Karl Jankowski was planning a hostile takeover by buying up RIM shares It says.

Jankowski invited Barsili and Lazaridis to New York, where he blinded them with the news over dinner, but Barsili successfully negotiated a moratorium on the execution.

“Jim said, ‘Look, don’t do that.’ Why don’t we sell you a company that’s more than a board? ‘So we can both win,'” Johnson said. “But of course he’s completely lying.”

After that fateful night, RIM spent nearly a year fending off Jankowski’s advances, often infuriating him by ignoring his calls. Jankowski considered Barsily a “stupid Canadian,” and Johnson said he even tried to sue him. .

It’s not that RIM was running and hiding. The plan was to raise the company’s share price to the point where Palm could no longer afford to buy it. Jankowski was completely blind.

“Suddenly Jim exploded in earnings and the stock price went completely crazy. Karl couldn’t buy the company anymore. It’s a really impressive business story – the stock price goes up enough not to be bought. “We’re suspending hostile takeovers until then,” Johnson said.

“It was an outrageous gamble.”

Blocking the takeover showed the market the cunning of Mr. Barsilly in charge and showed that BlackBerry was definitely a global force to be reckoned with.

pride is lost before it falls

At the height of RIM in 2006, Harvard-educated Barsilley — an avid hockey fan — tried to buy the then-financially bankrupt Pittsburgh Penguins for $175 million.

Ostensibly, the director said, this was a “charity” act done by a gamer who dreamed of playing professional hockey as a child.

But Barsily had hidden motives. It was widely reported that he was likely moving his western Pennsylvania pride to his own backyard in the industrial city of Hamilton, Ontario, something the NHL would never have supported.

Once commissioner Gary Bettman and league executives uncovered Barsilie’s alleged plans, the contract was frozen and the newly empowered CEO was sent to the penalty box after a chilly face-to-face meeting, Johnson said.

“That meeting was clearly one of the craziest days in the NHL,” Johnson said. “I think at that point Jim really thought he could win one in the NHL. , it wasn’t a great day.”

According to Johnson, the exchange was perhaps so intense that the film’s legal team had to submerge the on-screen scene.

The failed takeover was humiliating, but after Barsilie failed to land an attempt to catch the Nashville Predators and the then-Phoenix Coyotes, there were two more shots, one of which missed the mark. It was more of a sandbox than when Apple announced it a few months later. This is quickly regarded as the crown jewel of handheld technology.

Barsily and RIM were unprepared.

“At the time, he didn’t think BlackBerry would go bankrupt in a million years.” “He had no backup plan at all.”

BlackBerry struggled to fit into the new concept of keyboardless single-screen smartphones, but the market recognized it. RIM’s BlackBerry Storm was a shoddy iPhone candidate that was released hastily, but it was notoriously flawed and difficult to navigate.

“It’s commonly thought to be the most unsuccessful product launch of all time, and the one that returned $500 million in return. It’s crazy. Never has a product failed so badly.”

By 2013 or so, BlackBerry was completely rotten. Shares in the parent company currently fetch about $5 per share.

“The biggest problem the Blackberry had was that it only looked six feet in front of your face,” Johnson said. “The iPhone looked five years into the future for him.”