WEBVTT - TechStuff Classic: The Story of Rim 0:00:04.120 --> 0:00:07.120 Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how 0:00:07.200 --> 0:00:14.200 stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:14.200 --> 0:00:17.600 I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer over here, 0:00:17.600 --> 0:00:21.320 and I love all things tech and it is a 0:00:21.360 --> 0:00:24.320 Faraday That means it is time for a tech Stuff 0:00:24.440 --> 0:00:29.960 classic episode. This episode originally aired on November seven, two 0:00:29.960 --> 0:00:34.159 thousand eleven. It is the story of Rim or Research 0:00:34.280 --> 0:00:37.920 in Motion. That would be the company that makes BlackBerry. 0:00:37.960 --> 0:00:41.199 Where did they come from and what happened with that 0:00:41.240 --> 0:00:45.400 company up to two thousand eleven? At any rate, Sit back, 0:00:45.760 --> 0:00:49.480 relax and enjoy this classic episode, the story of Rim. 0:00:50.600 --> 0:00:52.920 He could play a guitar just like he was ringing 0:00:52.920 --> 0:00:57.200 a bell. Nice of you to be good. Yeah, see 0:00:57.240 --> 0:00:59.160 you gotta you gotta make a leap on that one. 0:00:59.280 --> 0:01:02.960 It's not just the long Who who made that song famous? 0:01:03.240 --> 0:01:06.440 And what was that guy's name? And uh no, it 0:01:06.560 --> 0:01:11.119 makes sense. We're gonna talk about the story of Rim. Yes, 0:01:11.600 --> 0:01:15.039 and uh, you know, I think RIM is a less 0:01:15.040 --> 0:01:18.240 famous name than the name of its flagship product. But 0:01:18.319 --> 0:01:20.280 we are talking about Research in Motion, which is a 0:01:20.319 --> 0:01:24.080 Canadian company. Uh. Several people have written in to ask 0:01:24.160 --> 0:01:26.000 us if we could talk about it. Yeah, lots of 0:01:26.160 --> 0:01:28.759 lots of people were interested in this, and we've referred 0:01:28.760 --> 0:01:31.479 to RIM quite a few times in other podcasts because 0:01:32.080 --> 0:01:36.040 the flagship product that Chris was alluding to is the BlackBerry, 0:01:36.920 --> 0:01:39.319 which is one of the smartphones that really kind of 0:01:39.880 --> 0:01:42.920 uh well, really, the BlackBerry was the smartphone for the 0:01:42.959 --> 0:01:46.119 longest time. I mean, the BlackBerry line was pretty much 0:01:46.120 --> 0:01:49.600 the smartphone that everyone was familiar with, and very few 0:01:49.600 --> 0:01:55.320 people outside of the corporate world owned. But uh, you know, 0:01:55.480 --> 0:01:58.480 RIM became famous because they had the company had this 0:01:58.560 --> 0:02:02.200 line of smartphones and they had kind of a almost 0:02:02.200 --> 0:02:05.040 a lock on the smartphone market. I mean really the 0:02:05.080 --> 0:02:08.600 only major competitor in the United States anyway, and other 0:02:08.639 --> 0:02:10.079 parts of the world it was different, but in the 0:02:10.160 --> 0:02:13.200 United States the other major competitor was Palm, So you 0:02:13.240 --> 0:02:15.639 had like the Palm Trio and then you had the BlackBerry, 0:02:15.680 --> 0:02:19.600 and you had people who were fanatically devoted to either, 0:02:20.000 --> 0:02:23.480 although BlackBerry again still had more of a corporate kind 0:02:23.520 --> 0:02:27.920 of culture to it because they RIM had incorporated the 0:02:27.960 --> 0:02:33.600 Microsoft Exchange server software in the BlackBerry form factor very 0:02:33.639 --> 0:02:36.679 early on, so it was very useful for anyone who 0:02:36.680 --> 0:02:40.400 worked for a company that used Microsoft exchange servers, and 0:02:40.440 --> 0:02:42.720 that's quite a few of them. Of course, lots of 0:02:42.760 --> 0:02:46.280 people are using lots of companies are using Outlook essentially 0:02:46.320 --> 0:02:49.280 as their main male uh feature that you know, there 0:02:49.280 --> 0:02:52.400 are other companies that use different servers for email, but 0:02:53.080 --> 0:02:56.120 the Microsoft Exchange server is incredibly popular. But before we 0:02:56.160 --> 0:02:57.720 get into all of that, we kind of need to 0:02:57.760 --> 0:03:02.400 go and talk about the founding of this company, which 0:03:02.520 --> 0:03:07.359 goes all the way back to nine Yeah yeah, now 0:03:07.400 --> 0:03:09.960 of course. Uh. Actually, and in in a way it 0:03:10.000 --> 0:03:13.560 goes back a little farther than that, um, you know, 0:03:13.600 --> 0:03:16.880 and you'd have to look to the University of Waterloo 0:03:17.480 --> 0:03:22.320 in Ontario, Canada, and uh, basically, uh, there was a 0:03:22.360 --> 0:03:26.800 student there named Mike Lazaridis and uh, you know he 0:03:26.919 --> 0:03:29.440 was he was into electrical engineering. He was in a 0:03:29.480 --> 0:03:32.680 computer science and uh he had been working with a 0:03:32.720 --> 0:03:35.520 company that, uh maybe we should talk about in the future. 0:03:35.520 --> 0:03:39.160 I don't know, Control Data, UM long known as a 0:03:39.680 --> 0:03:43.400 one of the computer pioneers. UM. And he had been 0:03:43.440 --> 0:03:47.880 working with that that company when he was in college. UM. 0:03:47.920 --> 0:03:51.680 But basically he was working on a way to uh 0:03:51.680 --> 0:03:54.440 on a on a project called BUDGEE. And no, I'm 0:03:54.480 --> 0:03:58.960 not talking about the percussionist for Susie and the benches. 0:03:59.120 --> 0:04:02.120 I was thinking of a bird or or that either 0:04:02.400 --> 0:04:05.880 it actually was a way to display information on TVs. 0:04:06.520 --> 0:04:09.680 UM and Uh He he, like many of the people 0:04:09.760 --> 0:04:12.200 we have talked about when we've talked about the tech pioneers, 0:04:12.480 --> 0:04:16.880 came up with this idea even before he UH finished school. 0:04:17.600 --> 0:04:20.839 And he dropped out of the University of Waterloo before 0:04:20.960 --> 0:04:24.160 before finishing school, which makes him very similar to other 0:04:24.800 --> 0:04:28.680 pioneers that we've talked about, Yes and so, UM and 0:04:28.720 --> 0:04:31.240 so he basically decided to UH to give it a 0:04:31.279 --> 0:04:34.960 go and and leave school, and UH came up with 0:04:35.120 --> 0:04:38.960 a company named Paradigm Research, except that name was already 0:04:38.960 --> 0:04:42.479 taken UM and they were trying. He tried several different names, 0:04:42.920 --> 0:04:46.560 ended up with UH. Inspired by the the phrase poetry 0:04:46.600 --> 0:04:49.559 and motion, decided to go with Research in Motion and 0:04:49.880 --> 0:04:53.760 the company was, as Jonathan pointed out, officially became incorporated 0:04:53.800 --> 0:04:58.640 officially on March seventh night, four ye. He received a 0:04:59.000 --> 0:05:02.520 essentially a loan from the Canadian government to help this, 0:05:02.680 --> 0:05:06.400 and he also had money invested by family and friends. 0:05:06.800 --> 0:05:09.920 Uh He and a fellow student, fellow by the name 0:05:09.960 --> 0:05:14.080 of Douglas Freegan founded this company together. Um Freagan became 0:05:14.120 --> 0:05:18.560 the vice president of operations. Uh Lazaridis became the president 0:05:18.720 --> 0:05:25.000 and CEO UM and UH, interestingly enough, we're back just 0:05:25.080 --> 0:05:28.279 to jump ahead, just very quickly. A Lazaridis is still 0:05:29.320 --> 0:05:33.599 a CEO of REM. It's RIM's got an interesting corporate 0:05:33.600 --> 0:05:36.800 structure and that it has two CEOs. And we'll get 0:05:36.800 --> 0:05:40.120 into more about that in a few, um a few minutes. 0:05:40.120 --> 0:05:45.240 When we jump ahead in in RIM's history. Now after 0:05:45.279 --> 0:05:47.960 the founding, what's the next piece of information you have? 0:05:48.080 --> 0:05:51.839 Because I jump ahead quite a few years, well four years. 0:05:52.600 --> 0:05:56.520 Well they the thing is, um, the Budgee didn't take 0:05:56.520 --> 0:06:01.280 off at all, Um, but General Motors UH needed some 0:06:01.760 --> 0:06:06.039 LED notification systems for their assembly lines. And uh you know, 0:06:06.080 --> 0:06:08.880 as you might guess, General Motors, especially back in the 0:06:08.920 --> 0:06:12.640 nineteen eighties, would have been a huge corporate client. UM. 0:06:12.680 --> 0:06:16.120 And that was his success, the CDs ON system. And 0:06:16.200 --> 0:06:19.159 this was General Motors of Canada. Yeah, so it was 0:06:19.160 --> 0:06:22.400 the Canadian the Canadian branch of General Motors. There are 0:06:22.440 --> 0:06:24.520 quite a few plants up there, or or were at 0:06:24.520 --> 0:06:27.320 that point. They've closed to a couple I think, Um, 0:06:27.360 --> 0:06:28.839 someone will right in and tell me that it's a 0:06:28.839 --> 0:06:32.440 lot of them, I'm sure, but um and the National 0:06:32.440 --> 0:06:35.560 Film Board of Canada did you know about this? Uh? 0:06:35.640 --> 0:06:40.080 They needed a system for UH synchronizing film editing, and 0:06:40.279 --> 0:06:43.000 uh RIM built a system for them, and it actually 0:06:43.000 --> 0:06:46.120 won an Academy award. Is this the digits Sink? I 0:06:46.160 --> 0:06:50.320 believe so the digits sink film key code reader that 0:06:50.360 --> 0:06:53.000 was actually that took a few years to to be introduced, 0:06:53.000 --> 0:06:55.680 that wasn't didn't really hit the market till nineteen nine. 0:06:55.839 --> 0:06:59.480 But yeah, um M won both an Oscar and an 0:06:59.480 --> 0:07:03.440 Emmy for this technology. Uh. And here's the interesting thing. 0:07:03.480 --> 0:07:05.200 You start hearing this where you know, here we are 0:07:05.240 --> 0:07:09.600 talking about UH film key code readers and and and 0:07:09.760 --> 0:07:13.520 displays and an industrial automation and you're thinking, wait a minute, 0:07:14.400 --> 0:07:18.360 that doesn't sound like a smartphone at all. Well, you're right. Uh, 0:07:18.400 --> 0:07:22.160 the early days of REM, we're not focused specifically on 0:07:22.400 --> 0:07:26.640 bringing uh telecommunications devices to market that you know, it 0:07:26.720 --> 0:07:29.640 was more of a kind of a general purpose research 0:07:30.080 --> 0:07:35.000 technology firm. And so you know these early days that 0:07:35.000 --> 0:07:37.440 that kind of I don't know, you might want to 0:07:37.440 --> 0:07:39.120 call it a lack of focus, or you may just 0:07:39.200 --> 0:07:42.440 call it that they were being very versatile. Uh, they 0:07:42.440 --> 0:07:46.680 were diversified, Yes, diversified good. Yes, they were taking a 0:07:46.720 --> 0:07:50.840 proactive stance. Um. Yeah, it was interesting that they weren't 0:07:50.840 --> 0:07:55.560 really focused on telecommunications. Now now in so you know 0:07:55.720 --> 0:07:58.000 ninety they've they've introduced the key code reader, but just 0:07:58.040 --> 0:08:01.280 a couple of years earlier and RIM became the first 0:08:01.360 --> 0:08:05.160 wireless data technology developer in North America and the first 0:08:05.160 --> 0:08:11.480 company outside of Scandinavia to create connectivity products for the 0:08:11.520 --> 0:08:16.960 mobile texts UH network. Wireless network. Now, this was a 0:08:16.960 --> 0:08:21.040 a wireless network. They used radio frequencies, used the packet 0:08:21.120 --> 0:08:24.000 data switching method, which we've talked about before in this podcast. 0:08:24.000 --> 0:08:26.680 You know the way that you send data through packets, 0:08:27.280 --> 0:08:30.680 but instead of it just being through a wire where 0:08:30.720 --> 0:08:34.160 you know you would send us through uh pulses of electricity, 0:08:34.600 --> 0:08:38.800 this would be through radio frequencies. And um, so mobile 0:08:38.800 --> 0:08:42.120 text is that was a data only actually is a 0:08:42.200 --> 0:08:47.920 data only wireless packet switching network. So it wasn't designed 0:08:47.960 --> 0:08:52.040 to carry voice communication. It was just data communication. And 0:08:52.120 --> 0:08:57.880 the earliest products that that RIM focused on weren't consumer products. 0:08:57.880 --> 0:09:01.880 They were all retail product enterprise products with stuff for 0:09:02.320 --> 0:09:07.920 point of point of sales terminals UH to allow point 0:09:07.960 --> 0:09:13.480 of sales terminals to send information wirelessly to some other machine. 0:09:14.440 --> 0:09:19.720 So again not not like something that you would immediately say, wow, 0:09:19.760 --> 0:09:22.880 that's that's really awesome, I can't wait to get my 0:09:22.920 --> 0:09:25.040 hands on it, because it just wasn't meant for the 0:09:25.080 --> 0:09:28.400 general consumer. Yeah. Well, of course, the business to business 0:09:28.440 --> 0:09:32.880 market is uh can be very very lucrative. Um. And 0:09:32.960 --> 0:09:35.240 at the point, you know, we're talking about the late 0:09:35.320 --> 0:09:39.240 nineteen eighties, early nineteen nineties, Uh, not everyone had a 0:09:39.280 --> 0:09:41.439 cell phone. I mean they were they you know, these 0:09:41.480 --> 0:09:44.440 mobile products, and a lot of people had pagers uh 0:09:44.440 --> 0:09:47.480 in the early nineties and um, of course in in 0:09:47.520 --> 0:09:50.920 the early nineties, that's that's sort of what RIM got into. 0:09:51.000 --> 0:09:54.920 They started looking at the possibilities of two way wireless communications. Yeah, 0:09:55.000 --> 0:09:56.760 that was one of the things they started to really 0:09:56.800 --> 0:09:59.840 research once they got involved in the mobile text network. 0:10:00.400 --> 0:10:05.280 Now in in nineteen uh so in the introduced the 0:10:05.320 --> 0:10:09.199 Mobile Text Protocol converter, which was the device that allowed 0:10:09.240 --> 0:10:11.559 them to create these products that would allow them to 0:10:11.320 --> 0:10:15.680 to tag on a converter box onto a an existing 0:10:15.720 --> 0:10:19.240 point of sales terminal. So it's kind of like an 0:10:19.280 --> 0:10:23.000 adapter that you could plug into your system and use 0:10:23.080 --> 0:10:27.360 the equipment you already have um to have this wireless 0:10:27.360 --> 0:10:30.840 connectivity of again just an enterprise sort of thing, a 0:10:30.880 --> 0:10:33.600 retail sort of thing, not a not a consumer thing. Yeah. 0:10:33.640 --> 0:10:36.800 Point of sale is is like at the cash register itself, yes, 0:10:36.920 --> 0:10:40.600 where you're actually going to buy something. And then in 0:10:40.760 --> 0:10:45.720 nine another person joins Rim and this is someone who 0:10:45.760 --> 0:10:50.320 will become very important. It's a Jim Basilei and so. 0:10:52.160 --> 0:10:56.360 And at this point, the the CEO role is divided 0:10:56.440 --> 0:11:01.640 in twain. Lazarides is in charge of things like product 0:11:01.679 --> 0:11:06.000 development and research, and Bassili was sort of the the 0:11:07.200 --> 0:11:12.400 the financial guy and the business development guy because those 0:11:12.400 --> 0:11:16.360 two parts of the CEO role, you know, just didn't 0:11:16.520 --> 0:11:20.199 didn't really the Lazards wasn't comfortable filling both of those 0:11:20.320 --> 0:11:22.000 parts of the role. He didn't think that he had 0:11:22.040 --> 0:11:26.679 the financial acumen to be able to do this effectively. 0:11:26.960 --> 0:11:29.079 He thought that there'd be a better way of leading 0:11:29.080 --> 0:11:31.200 this company. And so that was Bassili's role when he 0:11:31.240 --> 0:11:33.280 came on. And the two are still co C e 0:11:33.440 --> 0:11:38.199 O s And that has actually led to some criticism 0:11:38.280 --> 0:11:42.880 of Rimum throughout its history, but really that criticism has 0:11:42.880 --> 0:11:46.800 wrapped up quite a bit in and we'll we'll talk 0:11:46.800 --> 0:11:49.400 about that when we get a little further in. Yes, 0:11:49.679 --> 0:11:53.480 Mr Bassili actually put a quarter of a million dollars 0:11:53.480 --> 0:11:56.320 of his own money UH into RIM at that point, 0:11:56.400 --> 0:11:59.480 so that was a pretty substantial investment. Wouldn't be the 0:11:59.520 --> 0:12:03.280 first time he would have to pay. But we'll get 0:12:03.320 --> 0:12:08.240 into that too. That that's a there was. Rims also 0:12:08.480 --> 0:12:12.560 had a history of some pretty nasty legal battles, but 0:12:12.640 --> 0:12:16.160 that's that's in the late nineties and further on. Yeah, 0:12:16.200 --> 0:12:18.240 as a matter of fact, a couple of the timelines 0:12:18.280 --> 0:12:23.000 that I looked at, we're almost all about the legal battles. Yeah, No, 0:12:23.160 --> 0:12:25.320 there's a there's a stretch in the two thousand era 0:12:25.440 --> 0:12:27.880 where that's you know, there was no focus on the 0:12:27.920 --> 0:12:30.720 actual products, at least in the research I looked at 0:12:30.720 --> 0:12:35.280 as well. So in UH in ninety four we've got 0:12:35.640 --> 0:12:38.960 RIM offering its own point of sales terminal. So now 0:12:39.120 --> 0:12:43.200 now the technology has been incorporated directly into UH into 0:12:43.320 --> 0:12:46.959 terminals so that people can companies can buy them directly 0:12:47.000 --> 0:12:49.640 from RIM and they don't have to try and incorporate 0:12:49.760 --> 0:12:54.720 one technology with another. UH. And then in nine RIM 0:12:54.760 --> 0:12:58.960 introduces the Freedom, which is a PC m C I 0:12:59.160 --> 0:13:03.280 a radio them for computers. PC m c I A 0:13:03.360 --> 0:13:07.760 stands for Personal Computer Memory Card. International Association has several 0:13:07.760 --> 0:13:10.680 different types of cards, some of which are used to 0:13:10.800 --> 0:13:13.960 add memory to a computer, but the type two PC 0:13:14.400 --> 0:13:18.480 m c I A card is meant as a modem card, right, 0:13:18.559 --> 0:13:22.960 so it's basically a a card that you plug into 0:13:23.480 --> 0:13:27.959 the insides of your computer. Yeah. Uh, mainly laptops. Actually, 0:13:28.000 --> 0:13:30.400 a lot of laptops had expansion ports that you could 0:13:30.559 --> 0:13:33.640 you could plug a card into that one expansion port 0:13:34.040 --> 0:13:36.280 and it would allow you to do whatever, you know, 0:13:36.480 --> 0:13:38.480 increase the memory. And in this case, what it was 0:13:38.520 --> 0:13:40.760 doing is it was giving you a radio modem so 0:13:40.800 --> 0:13:43.640 that you can have wireless connectivity with your laptop, which 0:13:43.679 --> 0:13:46.400 was you know, that was a pretty new thing in 0:13:47.960 --> 0:13:50.920 there weren't a whole lot of solutions out there, and 0:13:51.000 --> 0:13:52.839 so RIM was kind of getting into that. And in 0:13:52.960 --> 0:13:58.600 nineties six RIM introduced the interactive pager, which is probably 0:13:58.640 --> 0:14:02.439 the most one of the most irritating lee spelled products 0:14:02.520 --> 0:14:04.640 of all time. Why because it has an AT sign 0:14:04.720 --> 0:14:08.640 for the that instead of a so that that irritates me. 0:14:09.120 --> 0:14:12.040 Well it um. It was sort of a revolutionary product. 0:14:12.520 --> 0:14:16.120 It's time though, because most pagers, uh, you know we're 0:14:16.440 --> 0:14:18.880 one way. Yeah. It meant that if you had a pager, 0:14:19.040 --> 0:14:21.320 you could receive messages on it, and that's all you 0:14:21.320 --> 0:14:24.440 could do. You could you could read through all those messages. 0:14:24.480 --> 0:14:26.400 But if someone sent you a page, you know, you 0:14:26.440 --> 0:14:28.920 would look down you see, oh, I've got a message 0:14:28.920 --> 0:14:31.120 from so and so. You put the pager down, you 0:14:31.120 --> 0:14:33.720 pick up a phone, you call that person and you know, 0:14:33.920 --> 0:14:37.560 have a discussion and rim. Because of its research in 0:14:37.760 --> 0:14:41.480 two way communication on the Mobo Tex network had come 0:14:41.560 --> 0:14:44.440 up with a way of creating a two way messaging service, 0:14:45.120 --> 0:14:47.840 and the Interactive pager would let you do this. You 0:14:47.840 --> 0:14:50.640 would have a it had a quarty keyboard, and it 0:14:50.720 --> 0:14:52.520 had a little bit a screen that could show up 0:14:52.560 --> 0:14:55.240 to four lines of text and you could get a 0:14:55.240 --> 0:14:57.320 message from someone and you could send a message back. 0:14:57.320 --> 0:15:01.360 So essentially your text messaging. That's that's what this technology 0:15:01.400 --> 0:15:03.720 allowed you to do, which was new. This was not 0:15:03.800 --> 0:15:07.320 something that was generally seen around this time. So suddenly 0:15:07.360 --> 0:15:09.480 you could get a pager that would allow you to 0:15:09.760 --> 0:15:13.000 do more communication where you wouldn't necessarily have to go 0:15:13.040 --> 0:15:15.840 and find a phone or or carry, you know, a 0:15:15.880 --> 0:15:18.720 cell phone. Along with the pager, you could actually communicate 0:15:18.760 --> 0:15:21.080 with people, assuming that they had a device that, you know, 0:15:21.120 --> 0:15:24.960 a pager, that they could use to read the message 0:15:24.960 --> 0:15:27.680 you're sending them. Otherwise it's still whole one way um, 0:15:27.720 --> 0:15:29.360 and it do you know how much it costs? No, 0:15:29.480 --> 0:15:32.120 Actually I don't know that, Okay, So it's a two 0:15:32.160 --> 0:15:34.440 way pager. It also had all the functions of a 0:15:34.440 --> 0:15:36.400 one way pager, so it's not like it's you know, 0:15:36.760 --> 0:15:40.440 limited to that, but a two way pager text only 0:15:41.320 --> 0:15:47.000 four lines of text per screen SIV. And that's not 0:15:47.040 --> 0:15:50.320 including the service fee. That's that's the price of the 0:15:50.320 --> 0:15:53.760 product itself. So if you think about that, a six 0:15:53.840 --> 0:15:57.320 hundred and seventy five dollar two way pager, that's you know, 0:15:57.560 --> 0:16:01.080 that's that's a chunk of change, especially when you can 0:16:01.120 --> 0:16:04.280 go out and buy a fully featured smartphone without a 0:16:04.360 --> 0:16:08.680 contract for around that same amount. I mean, that's pretty impressive. 0:16:10.240 --> 0:16:12.600 It's a different world we live in now. Yeah. Yeah, 0:16:12.640 --> 0:16:15.120 and from I've never actually seen one of these in person. 0:16:15.160 --> 0:16:18.320 I've seen photos online, but from what I've read, it 0:16:18.400 --> 0:16:22.200 was also a very large device, yeah, compared to especially 0:16:22.280 --> 0:16:25.880 compared to today's technology. It was it was sometimes called 0:16:25.920 --> 0:16:30.200 the RIM nine hundred because that's how many pounds it weighed? No, no, 0:16:30.320 --> 0:16:32.280 it was. But but it had a flip top, you know, 0:16:32.320 --> 0:16:34.800 you would talk, you would lift the lid up and 0:16:34.840 --> 0:16:36.320 that had the screen on it. Then you had the 0:16:36.360 --> 0:16:39.360 full Quarty keyboard beneath you folded it down. It was 0:16:39.400 --> 0:16:41.920 like a brick and uh yeah it was. It was big, 0:16:42.320 --> 0:16:46.360 um and but it kind of paved the way for 0:16:46.480 --> 0:16:49.600 RIM's future. Chris Poulette and I have a lot more 0:16:49.640 --> 0:16:52.840 to say about RIM, but let's take a quick break 0:16:53.000 --> 0:17:03.600 to thank our sponsor. So in ven this is the 0:17:03.680 --> 0:17:06.960 year after they've introduced the interactive pager, RIM becomes a 0:17:07.000 --> 0:17:10.240 publicly traded company on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Right, that 0:17:10.240 --> 0:17:12.760 helped him raise quite a bit of money, about well 0:17:12.840 --> 0:17:16.240 more than a hundred and fifteen million dollars um. Which 0:17:16.320 --> 0:17:19.920 when you're a company that's that's getting its foothold, that 0:17:19.920 --> 0:17:22.360 that's a lot of money. Yeah, that's that's a ton. Yeah. Yeah. 0:17:22.359 --> 0:17:26.359 And so RIM joins other Toronto Stock Exchange staples like 0:17:26.359 --> 0:17:31.679 Poutine and then in what Canadians Are Too Nice to 0:17:31.680 --> 0:17:37.080 be mean to Me? I Love Poutine. In ninety eight, 0:17:37.280 --> 0:17:43.240 Rim introduces the nine fifty wireless handheld device. Now this 0:17:43.320 --> 0:17:47.000 one is a much smaller to a pager. This is 0:17:47.000 --> 0:17:48.880 the one that a lot of people remember when they 0:17:49.040 --> 0:17:51.040 think back to the old rim pagers. This is this 0:17:51.119 --> 0:17:54.120 is the form factor that was really familiar to them. Um. 0:17:54.119 --> 0:17:58.520 And it also introduced uh they licensed to technology from 0:17:58.600 --> 0:18:04.320 Puma Technology, the Intelisinc synchronization platform which actually allowed for 0:18:04.440 --> 0:18:08.399 sinking with the device, and before that it didn't have 0:18:08.520 --> 0:18:13.399 that capability. So now this two way pager has sinking capability, 0:18:13.480 --> 0:18:15.600 so you can sink it with another device, and it 0:18:15.720 --> 0:18:21.760 also could run applications written in CE language. Um oh, 0:18:21.840 --> 0:18:24.320 and I guess we can take just a brief moment 0:18:24.400 --> 0:18:27.160 and and acknowledge the fact that the week we're recording 0:18:27.200 --> 0:18:29.639 this is sadly the same week we learned of the 0:18:29.760 --> 0:18:34.440 passing of the man who wrote the C programming language. 0:18:35.040 --> 0:18:38.879 So uh so rest in peace, Mr Ritchie. So they 0:18:39.160 --> 0:18:43.760 the the RAM nine fifty wireless handheld can run C 0:18:44.600 --> 0:18:47.280 language programs. Actually read about a guy who used to 0:18:47.320 --> 0:18:53.919 have a UH version of Super Mario on this little pager. 0:18:54.480 --> 0:18:58.040 Really yeah, he had a C programming language version of 0:18:58.040 --> 0:19:00.760 Super Mario that he would play on the pager. I 0:19:00.800 --> 0:19:03.720 can't imagine that would be terribly satisfying, but it wasn't interesting. 0:19:03.880 --> 0:19:07.160 Well yeah, and imagine so um and so this one 0:19:07.200 --> 0:19:09.560 again was smaller than the nine hundred that we talked 0:19:09.560 --> 0:19:11.600 about a little bit ago, and it still had the 0:19:11.640 --> 0:19:15.760 quirty keyboard in the little screen right. Um. Yeah. At 0:19:15.800 --> 0:19:20.000 this point, RIM has become one of Canada's fastest growing 0:19:20.000 --> 0:19:23.919 tech companies. Um, you know. And it's actually it's it's 0:19:23.920 --> 0:19:26.879 funny because, um, from what I understand, the campus is 0:19:27.000 --> 0:19:29.640 right there at the University of Waterloo, right next door. 0:19:29.760 --> 0:19:34.000 Essentially um sipening off engineering students as fast as possible 0:19:34.000 --> 0:19:37.920 probably um. But some people have started calling this part 0:19:38.000 --> 0:19:41.840 of you know, the Kitchener Waterloo area as a silicon 0:19:41.960 --> 0:19:45.240 valley north. Um. I don't know that there's much of 0:19:45.240 --> 0:19:48.560 a valley, but you know, I guess it's just the 0:19:48.560 --> 0:19:52.159 the slang for the term. But yeah, ninety nine is 0:19:52.200 --> 0:19:56.560 when they Rim became listed on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange, 0:19:56.760 --> 0:20:02.240 which helped the company get another two fifty million dollars UM. 0:20:02.280 --> 0:20:05.320 And this is the point at which the devices, the 0:20:05.600 --> 0:20:08.080 little buttons on the outside of the devices, are beginning 0:20:08.200 --> 0:20:12.120 to remind some people of of seeds on the outside 0:20:12.119 --> 0:20:17.280 of fruit, which is how apparently the BlackBerry got its name. 0:20:17.520 --> 0:20:22.000 Although when BlackBerry was first announced, it was just a 0:20:22.040 --> 0:20:27.320 wireless email solution. It wasn't specifically UH attributed to a 0:20:27.320 --> 0:20:30.840 particular product, So in other words, you didn't call your 0:20:30.920 --> 0:20:35.119 phone a BlackBerry at this point. Yet the BlackBerry referred 0:20:35.160 --> 0:20:39.280 to the technology that allowed to access email. And this 0:20:39.359 --> 0:20:43.520 is where black BlackBerry introduces the Enterprise server software for 0:20:43.640 --> 0:20:47.360 Microsoft Exchange. So now we've got the devices that will 0:20:47.400 --> 0:20:51.359 allow you to access your corporate email or your Microsoft 0:20:51.359 --> 0:20:54.719 Exchange email if it's not necessarily corporate, it's just that 0:20:54.760 --> 0:20:58.000 was the most common. But it would allow you to 0:20:58.080 --> 0:21:01.320 check email on devices. It still didn't have a phone, 0:21:01.880 --> 0:21:04.760 so this is more like a personal digital assistant. But 0:21:04.920 --> 0:21:09.560 they introduced the RIM eight fifty wireless handheld and which 0:21:09.720 --> 0:21:13.439 looked a lot like the nine fifty, except now the 0:21:13.520 --> 0:21:17.240 eight fifty runs on the data attack wireless network, the 0:21:17.359 --> 0:21:20.320 nine fifties on the mobile text wireless network. So these 0:21:20.320 --> 0:21:23.600 are two different wireless technologies, and that might sound strange 0:21:23.640 --> 0:21:25.320 to you, except that we still see that kind of 0:21:25.320 --> 0:21:27.879 stuff today. I mean we see it in multiple UH 0:21:28.280 --> 0:21:31.200 areas because we've got C d M a versus G 0:21:31.400 --> 0:21:34.040 s M. Those are two different wireless technologies. You've got 0:21:34.119 --> 0:21:36.320 things like y max and LTE. Those are two different 0:21:36.359 --> 0:21:39.639 wireless technology. So uh. In other words, BlackBerry was trying 0:21:39.680 --> 0:21:43.360 to broaden its market by creating devices that could work 0:21:43.400 --> 0:21:47.320 on other wireless networks so that they could reach more consumers. 0:21:48.920 --> 0:21:53.000 And uh, the A fifty is um as as far 0:21:53.040 --> 0:21:55.560 as I can tell, the eight fifty is the device 0:21:55.680 --> 0:22:00.400 that really started the ball rolling in a way, and 0:22:00.640 --> 0:22:04.040 it's the it's the device that got uh people to 0:22:04.119 --> 0:22:06.399 really sit up and take notice, and people wanted to 0:22:06.440 --> 0:22:09.760 buy it. Um right, you know this is this is 0:22:09.760 --> 0:22:12.679 an arrow in a lot. Not everyone still not everyone 0:22:12.720 --> 0:22:16.119 had personal email, the corporate email. Well that was very 0:22:16.200 --> 0:22:19.240 useful and people it was really starting to take off, 0:22:19.280 --> 0:22:21.639 and it was it's important. Now all of a sudden, 0:22:21.680 --> 0:22:24.360 you're able to keep up with things that are going 0:22:24.400 --> 0:22:28.080 on in the office, um conveniently while you are out 0:22:28.119 --> 0:22:31.880 and about, while you're at lunch, um, while you're at home. 0:22:32.080 --> 0:22:34.600 You don't have to find a computer to log in anymore. 0:22:34.720 --> 0:22:36.800 You can just check it. And it's easy to do, 0:22:37.280 --> 0:22:39.600 so easy in fact, that people kind of want to 0:22:39.640 --> 0:22:43.040 do it, which is why you couldn't get people to 0:22:43.119 --> 0:22:47.760 leave them alone. It's also why we call them crackberries. Uh. 0:22:47.800 --> 0:22:51.720 Now after the addictive drug. In two thousand, the RAM 0:22:51.800 --> 0:22:55.639 introduced the eight, fifty seven and the seven wireless handheld devices. 0:22:55.720 --> 0:22:57.359 This is these are the ones that really looked like 0:22:57.400 --> 0:23:00.880 p D as you know, they had the monochrome screening. Uh, 0:23:00.920 --> 0:23:03.440 they had a larger so the screens larger, the quarty 0:23:03.480 --> 0:23:05.760 keyboards spread out there. That these are the devices that 0:23:05.760 --> 0:23:09.600 look a little more squar ish or even rectangular, where 0:23:10.400 --> 0:23:12.920 you've got a lot more real estate for the screens 0:23:13.359 --> 0:23:17.200 and in uh in two thousand one, uh, that's where 0:23:17.200 --> 0:23:22.720 we start getting into some legal issues. So two thousand one, 0:23:22.800 --> 0:23:27.959 a group of investors file a lawsuit in a US 0:23:28.080 --> 0:23:33.480 federal court and they they accuse rim of using of 0:23:33.560 --> 0:23:37.280 infringing on patents held by a patent company called n 0:23:37.480 --> 0:23:41.359 t P. Now you may have heard our Yeah, if 0:23:41.400 --> 0:23:45.160 you heard our our Patent Wars podcast, we talked about 0:23:45.200 --> 0:23:49.480 there were there are companies out there that really what 0:23:49.640 --> 0:23:53.320 they do is they acquire patents and then they either 0:23:53.520 --> 0:23:56.680 license those patents out to other companies that want to 0:23:56.760 --> 0:23:59.879 use the technology, or they sit on the patents and 0:24:00.080 --> 0:24:02.840 wait for someone to infringe on them and then sue 0:24:03.200 --> 0:24:05.439 the dickens out of them. Yeah, that's the problem with 0:24:05.440 --> 0:24:07.240 getting people to sit up and take notice of you. 0:24:07.760 --> 0:24:10.320 That also means that people sit up and take notice 0:24:10.320 --> 0:24:14.439 of you. NTP noticed. Um. Also in two thousand, just 0:24:14.560 --> 0:24:18.000