Back within the Nineties, long before the pandemic made distant work the brand new normal, just a few tech geeks at a Canadian company named Research In Motion, understanding of a cramped office space in Waterloo, Ontario — under the leadership of founder Michael Lazaridis and CEO Jim Balsillie — all but invented the concept.
Right across the turn of the century, they created the world’s smallest portable email terminal — an internet-enabled handheld that got here complete with full keyboard.
Soon, they found out learn how to turn the thing right into a cellphone, and the world’s first truly smart phone, the BlackBerry, was born in 2002.
“There clearly was a large hunger for it — BlackBerry broke the doors open,” Matt Johnson, director of “BlackBerry,” a movie that chronicles the rise and fall of the tech titan, in theaters Friday — told The Post.
Jim Balsillie (left) and Mike Lazaridis revolutionized the tech world with the BlackBerry.REUTERS
BlackBerry phones quickly modified the tech landscape.Europa Press via Getty Images
“Other people were attempting to do email on a phone at the identical time, but their products weren’t robust.”
The state-of-the-art tech was nicknamed “CrackBerry” due to how quickly the world became addicted. Nonetheless, as notable because the device’s game-changing qualities was the business savvy of RIM honchos Balsillie (Glenn Howerton) and Lazaridis (Jay Baruchel), each determined to profit handsomely from their creation.
BlackBerry’s business-forward strategy paid off — at first.
“BlackBerry would sell their devices to individual users after which that user would have a take care of their local carrier to have access to the network. BlackBerry would charge you a surcharge on top of that, just to make use of that phone,” said Johnson, who also plays RIM co-founder Douglas Fregin within the film.
“Imagine that to make use of your iPhone, you’ll want to pay a special iPhone fee. These guys were making buckets of cash renting network space to those users.”
From the time it hit the market as much as the crushing blow delivered by Apple’s iPhone in 2007, BlackBerry was the cream of the tech crop, controlling a whopping half of the smartphone market within the U.S. and 20% globally. RIM enjoyed a market value of $230 per share at its peak.
The tech-cessory quickly became a fixture with boldfacers like President Barack Obama, Anna Wintour, Sarah Jessica Parker and Katy Perry — who tried a BlackBerry and liked it.
President Barack Obama was one in every of the world’s most visible BlackBerry users in the course of the device’s heyday.Getty Images
Vogue’s Anna Wintour was rarely seen without her ‘Berry on the time.Getty Images
Katy Perry tried a BlackBerry — and liked it.INFphoto.com
But while the BlackBerry product was indisputably top of the road, there was no shortage of competition — starting with Palm, parent company of the PalmPilot, which had its own celebrity following, including Michael Jordan and Claudia Schiffer.
Palm was hungry for a taste of BlackBerry — before the phone was even out, CEO Carl Yankowski was planning a hostile takeover of RIM, in line with Johnson.
Yankowski invited Balsillie and Lazaridis to Latest York and blindsided them along with his plans over dinner, but Balsillie managed to barter a stay of execution.
CEO Jim Basillie famously thwarted an early takeover attempt, holding off a hostile suitor until the corporate’s stock rose.Toronto Star via Getty Images
BlackBerry boosted its stock to forestall a takeover.Google Finance
“Jim said, ‘Look, please don’t try this. Why don’t we just sell you the corporate above board.’ That way we will each win,’” Johnson said. “But in fact, he’s completely lying.”
After that night, RIM spent nearly a 12 months heading off Yankowski. They often did this just by ignoring his phone calls, angering Yankowski, who saw Balsillie as “a silly Canadian,” in line with Johnson, to the purpose where he was about to sue them.
Not that RIM was running and hiding — the plan was to spice up company stock to the purpose where Palm could not afford a buyout. Yankowski was completely blindsided.
“Unexpectedly, Jim unleashes their earnings and their stock just went completely insane. Carl not could buy the corporate. It’s a extremely form of a formidable business story — holding up a hostile takeover until you possibly can raise your stock price high enough so that you may’t be taken over,” Johnson said.
“It was a hell of of venture.”
The thwarted takeover showed the markets Balsillie’s cunning, and that BlackBerry was truly a worldwide force to be reckoned with.
Pride goeth before a fall
While RIM could have been great at making a living, it was less spectacular at innovating — BlackBerry would soon find itself falling behind.REUTERS
At RIM’s peak in 2006, the Harvard-educated Balsillie — a diehard hockey fan — tried to buy the then financially-wrecked Pittsburgh Penguins for $175 million.
Publicly, it was a maneuver of “charity” from a lover of the sport who’d dreamed of playing pro hockey as a child, in line with Johnson.
But Balsillie had ulterior motives. It was widely reported that he was likely attempting to relocate the pride of western Pennsylvania to his own backyard, industrial Hamilton, Ontario — something the NHL would never have stood for.
Once commissioner Gary Bettman and league executives discovered Balsillie’s alleged plan, the deal was placed on ice — and the newly-emboldened CEO was sent to the penalty box, after a cold in-person meeting, Johnson said.
The NHL was hellbent on stopping Jim Balsillie from acquiring one in every of its teams. REUTERS
“That meeting apparently was like one of the vital insane days of the NHL,” Johnson said. “I believe Jim, at that time, really thought that he was going to get one over on the NHL. I believe he really thought that he was going to give you the chance to make use of the court system to win. When he realized that he couldn’t, it was not a fairly day.”
The exchange was supposedly so intense that the film’s legal team needed to water the scene down on-screen, Johnson said.
As humiliating because the failed purchase was — together with two more shots Balsillie did not land, attempting to snap up the Nashville Predators and the then-Phoenix Coyotes — it was sandbox stuff in comparison with what got here months later, when Apple unveiled the iPhone.
Steve Jobs and the iPhone led to the demise of BlackBerry.Getty Images
Balsillie and RIM weren’t prepared.
“At the moment, he didn’t think in 1,000,000 years BlackBerry was going to go under. He had this famous quote, ‘We’re going straight to the moon, or we’re crashing down hard to earth,” Johnson said. “He didn’t have a backup plan in any respect.”
BlackBerry struggled to match the brand new concept of a keyboardless, single-screen smartphone — and the market knew it. RIM’s BlackBerry Storm, a slapdash, hastily-released iPhone wannabe, was notorious for being highly defective and hard to operate.
Founder Mike Lazaridis and RIM created BlackBerry Storm as an attempted answer to the iPhone. It was a notoriously dysfunctional phone. Getty Images
“It’s universally thought to be probably the most failed product launch of all time, $500 million in return product. It’s crazy. There’s never been a product that unsuccessful, ever.”
By around 2013, the BlackBerry had gone totally rotten. Today, stock in its parent company goes for about $5 a share.
“The largest issue that BlackBerry had is that they only looked six feet in front of their face,” Johnson said. “The iPhone looked five years into the longer term.”
