Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer over here,
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech and it is a
Speaker 1: Faraday That means it is time for a tech Stuff
Speaker 1: classic episode. This episode originally aired on November seven, two
Speaker 1: thousand eleven. It is the story of Rim or Research
Speaker 1: in Motion. That would be the company that makes BlackBerry.
Speaker 1: Where did they come from and what happened with that
Speaker 1: company up to two thousand eleven? At any rate, Sit back,
Speaker 1: relax and enjoy this classic episode, the story of Rim.
Speaker 1: He could play a guitar just like he was ringing
Speaker 1: a bell. Nice of you to be good. Yeah, see
Speaker 1: you gotta you gotta make a leap on that one.
Speaker 1: It's not just the long Who who made that song famous?
Speaker 1: And what was that guy's name? And uh no, it
Speaker 1: makes sense. We're gonna talk about the story of Rim. Yes,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, I think RIM is a less
Speaker 1: famous name than the name of its flagship product. But
Speaker 1: we are talking about Research in Motion, which is a
Speaker 1: Canadian company. Uh. Several people have written in to ask
Speaker 1: us if we could talk about it. Yeah, lots of
Speaker 1: lots of people were interested in this, and we've referred
Speaker 1: to RIM quite a few times in other podcasts because
Speaker 1: the flagship product that Chris was alluding to is the BlackBerry,
Speaker 1: which is one of the smartphones that really kind of
Speaker 1: uh well, really, the BlackBerry was the smartphone for the
Speaker 1: longest time. I mean, the BlackBerry line was pretty much
Speaker 1: the smartphone that everyone was familiar with, and very few
Speaker 1: people outside of the corporate world owned. But uh, you know,
Speaker 1: RIM became famous because they had the company had this
Speaker 1: line of smartphones and they had kind of a almost
Speaker 1: a lock on the smartphone market. I mean really the
Speaker 1: only major competitor in the United States anyway, and other
Speaker 1: parts of the world it was different, but in the
Speaker 1: United States the other major competitor was Palm, So you
Speaker 1: had like the Palm Trio and then you had the BlackBerry,
Speaker 1: and you had people who were fanatically devoted to either,
Speaker 1: although BlackBerry again still had more of a corporate kind
Speaker 1: of culture to it because they RIM had incorporated the
Speaker 1: Microsoft Exchange server software in the BlackBerry form factor very
Speaker 1: early on, so it was very useful for anyone who
Speaker 1: worked for a company that used Microsoft exchange servers, and
Speaker 1: that's quite a few of them. Of course, lots of
Speaker 1: people are using lots of companies are using Outlook essentially
Speaker 1: as their main male uh feature that you know, there
Speaker 1: are other companies that use different servers for email, but
Speaker 1: the Microsoft Exchange server is incredibly popular. But before we
Speaker 1: get into all of that, we kind of need to
Speaker 1: go and talk about the founding of this company, which
Speaker 1: goes all the way back to nine Yeah yeah, now
Speaker 1: of course. Uh. Actually, and in in a way it
Speaker 1: goes back a little farther than that, um, you know,
Speaker 1: and you'd have to look to the University of Waterloo
Speaker 1: in Ontario, Canada, and uh, basically, uh, there was a
Speaker 1: student there named Mike Lazaridis and uh, you know he
Speaker 1: was he was into electrical engineering. He was in a
Speaker 1: computer science and uh he had been working with a
Speaker 1: company that, uh maybe we should talk about in the future.
Speaker 1: I don't know, Control Data, UM long known as a
Speaker 1: one of the computer pioneers. UM. And he had been
Speaker 1: working with that that company when he was in college. UM.
Speaker 1: But basically he was working on a way to uh
Speaker 1: on a on a project called BUDGEE. And no, I'm
Speaker 1: not talking about the percussionist for Susie and the benches.
Speaker 1: I was thinking of a bird or or that either
Speaker 1: it actually was a way to display information on TVs.
Speaker 1: UM and Uh He he, like many of the people
Speaker 1: we have talked about when we've talked about the tech pioneers,
Speaker 1: came up with this idea even before he UH finished school.
Speaker 1: And he dropped out of the University of Waterloo before
Speaker 1: before finishing school, which makes him very similar to other
Speaker 1: pioneers that we've talked about, Yes and so, UM and
Speaker 1: so he basically decided to UH to give it a
Speaker 1: go and and leave school, and UH came up with
Speaker 1: a company named Paradigm Research, except that name was already
Speaker 1: taken UM and they were trying. He tried several different names,
Speaker 1: ended up with UH. Inspired by the the phrase poetry
Speaker 1: and motion, decided to go with Research in Motion and
Speaker 1: the company was, as Jonathan pointed out, officially became incorporated
Speaker 1: officially on March seventh night, four ye. He received a
Speaker 1: essentially a loan from the Canadian government to help this,
Speaker 1: and he also had money invested by family and friends.
Speaker 1: Uh He and a fellow student, fellow by the name
Speaker 1: of Douglas Freegan founded this company together. Um Freagan became
Speaker 1: the vice president of operations. Uh Lazaridis became the president
Speaker 1: and CEO UM and UH, interestingly enough, we're back just
Speaker 1: to jump ahead, just very quickly. A Lazaridis is still
Speaker 1: a CEO of REM. It's RIM's got an interesting corporate
Speaker 1: structure and that it has two CEOs. And we'll get
Speaker 1: into more about that in a few, um a few minutes.
Speaker 1: When we jump ahead in in RIM's history. Now after
Speaker 1: the founding, what's the next piece of information you have?
Speaker 1: Because I jump ahead quite a few years, well four years.
Speaker 1: Well they the thing is, um, the Budgee didn't take
Speaker 1: off at all, Um, but General Motors UH needed some
Speaker 1: LED notification systems for their assembly lines. And uh you know,
Speaker 1: as you might guess, General Motors, especially back in the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, would have been a huge corporate client. UM.
Speaker 1: And that was his success, the CDs ON system. And
Speaker 1: this was General Motors of Canada. Yeah, so it was
Speaker 1: the Canadian the Canadian branch of General Motors. There are
Speaker 1: quite a few plants up there, or or were at
Speaker 1: that point. They've closed to a couple I think, Um,
Speaker 1: someone will right in and tell me that it's a
Speaker 1: lot of them, I'm sure, but um and the National
Speaker 1: Film Board of Canada did you know about this? Uh?
Speaker 1: They needed a system for UH synchronizing film editing, and
Speaker 1: uh RIM built a system for them, and it actually
Speaker 1: won an Academy award. Is this the digits Sink? I
Speaker 1: believe so the digits sink film key code reader that
Speaker 1: was actually that took a few years to to be introduced,
Speaker 1: that wasn't didn't really hit the market till nineteen nine.
Speaker 1: But yeah, um M won both an Oscar and an
Speaker 1: Emmy for this technology. Uh. And here's the interesting thing.
Speaker 1: You start hearing this where you know, here we are
Speaker 1: talking about UH film key code readers and and and
Speaker 1: displays and an industrial automation and you're thinking, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: that doesn't sound like a smartphone at all. Well, you're right. Uh,
Speaker 1: the early days of REM, we're not focused specifically on
Speaker 1: bringing uh telecommunications devices to market that you know, it
Speaker 1: was more of a kind of a general purpose research
Speaker 1: technology firm. And so you know these early days that
Speaker 1: that kind of I don't know, you might want to
Speaker 1: call it a lack of focus, or you may just
Speaker 1: call it that they were being very versatile. Uh, they
Speaker 1: were diversified, Yes, diversified good. Yes, they were taking a
Speaker 1: proactive stance. Um. Yeah, it was interesting that they weren't
Speaker 1: really focused on telecommunications. Now now in so you know
Speaker 1: ninety they've they've introduced the key code reader, but just
Speaker 1: a couple of years earlier and RIM became the first
Speaker 1: wireless data technology developer in North America and the first
Speaker 1: company outside of Scandinavia to create connectivity products for the
Speaker 1: mobile texts UH network. Wireless network. Now, this was a
Speaker 1: a wireless network. They used radio frequencies, used the packet
Speaker 1: data switching method, which we've talked about before in this podcast.
Speaker 1: You know the way that you send data through packets,
Speaker 1: but instead of it just being through a wire where
Speaker 1: you know you would send us through uh pulses of electricity,
Speaker 1: this would be through radio frequencies. And um, so mobile
Speaker 1: text is that was a data only actually is a
Speaker 1: data only wireless packet switching network. So it wasn't designed
Speaker 1: to carry voice communication. It was just data communication. And
Speaker 1: the earliest products that that RIM focused on weren't consumer products.
Speaker 1: They were all retail product enterprise products with stuff for
Speaker 1: point of point of sales terminals UH to allow point
Speaker 1: of sales terminals to send information wirelessly to some other machine.
Speaker 1: So again not not like something that you would immediately say, wow,
Speaker 1: that's that's really awesome, I can't wait to get my
Speaker 1: hands on it, because it just wasn't meant for the
Speaker 1: general consumer. Yeah. Well, of course, the business to business
Speaker 1: market is uh can be very very lucrative. Um. And
Speaker 1: at the point, you know, we're talking about the late
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, early nineteen nineties, Uh, not everyone had a
Speaker 1: cell phone. I mean they were they you know, these
Speaker 1: mobile products, and a lot of people had pagers uh
Speaker 1: in the early nineties and um, of course in in
Speaker 1: the early nineties, that's that's sort of what RIM got into.
Speaker 1: They started looking at the possibilities of two way wireless communications. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was one of the things they started to really
Speaker 1: research once they got involved in the mobile text network.
Speaker 1: Now in in nineteen uh so in the introduced the
Speaker 1: Mobile Text Protocol converter, which was the device that allowed
Speaker 1: them to create these products that would allow them to
Speaker 1: to tag on a converter box onto a an existing
Speaker 1: point of sales terminal. So it's kind of like an
Speaker 1: adapter that you could plug into your system and use
Speaker 1: the equipment you already have um to have this wireless
Speaker 1: connectivity of again just an enterprise sort of thing, a
Speaker 1: retail sort of thing, not a not a consumer thing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Point of sale is is like at the cash register itself, yes,
Speaker 1: where you're actually going to buy something. And then in
Speaker 1: nine another person joins Rim and this is someone who
Speaker 1: will become very important. It's a Jim Basilei and so.
Speaker 1: And at this point, the the CEO role is divided
Speaker 1: in twain. Lazarides is in charge of things like product
Speaker 1: development and research, and Bassili was sort of the the
Speaker 1: the financial guy and the business development guy because those
Speaker 1: two parts of the CEO role, you know, just didn't
Speaker 1: didn't really the Lazards wasn't comfortable filling both of those
Speaker 1: parts of the role. He didn't think that he had
Speaker 1: the financial acumen to be able to do this effectively.
Speaker 1: He thought that there'd be a better way of leading
Speaker 1: this company. And so that was Bassili's role when he
Speaker 1: came on. And the two are still co C e
Speaker 1: O s And that has actually led to some criticism
Speaker 1: of Rimum throughout its history, but really that criticism has
Speaker 1: wrapped up quite a bit in and we'll we'll talk
Speaker 1: about that when we get a little further in. Yes,
Speaker 1: Mr Bassili actually put a quarter of a million dollars
Speaker 1: of his own money UH into RIM at that point,
Speaker 1: so that was a pretty substantial investment. Wouldn't be the
Speaker 1: first time he would have to pay. But we'll get
Speaker 1: into that too. That that's a there was. Rims also
Speaker 1: had a history of some pretty nasty legal battles, but
Speaker 1: that's that's in the late nineties and further on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as a matter of fact, a couple of the timelines
Speaker 1: that I looked at, we're almost all about the legal battles. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a stretch in the two thousand era
Speaker 1: where that's you know, there was no focus on the
Speaker 1: actual products, at least in the research I looked at
Speaker 1: as well. So in UH in ninety four we've got
Speaker 1: RIM offering its own point of sales terminal. So now
Speaker 1: now the technology has been incorporated directly into UH into
Speaker 1: terminals so that people can companies can buy them directly
Speaker 1: from RIM and they don't have to try and incorporate
Speaker 1: one technology with another. UH. And then in nine RIM
Speaker 1: introduces the Freedom, which is a PC m C I
Speaker 1: a radio them for computers. PC m c I A
Speaker 1: stands for Personal Computer Memory Card. International Association has several
Speaker 1: different types of cards, some of which are used to
Speaker 1: add memory to a computer, but the type two PC
Speaker 1: m c I A card is meant as a modem card, right,
Speaker 1: so it's basically a a card that you plug into
Speaker 1: the insides of your computer. Yeah. Uh, mainly laptops. Actually,
Speaker 1: a lot of laptops had expansion ports that you could
Speaker 1: you could plug a card into that one expansion port
Speaker 1: and it would allow you to do whatever, you know,
Speaker 1: increase the memory. And in this case, what it was
Speaker 1: doing is it was giving you a radio modem so
Speaker 1: that you can have wireless connectivity with your laptop, which
Speaker 1: was you know, that was a pretty new thing in
Speaker 1: there weren't a whole lot of solutions out there, and
Speaker 1: so RIM was kind of getting into that. And in
Speaker 1: nineties six RIM introduced the interactive pager, which is probably
Speaker 1: the most one of the most irritating lee spelled products
Speaker 1: of all time. Why because it has an AT sign
Speaker 1: for the that instead of a so that that irritates me.
Speaker 1: Well it um. It was sort of a revolutionary product.
Speaker 1: It's time though, because most pagers, uh, you know we're
Speaker 1: one way. Yeah. It meant that if you had a pager,
Speaker 1: you could receive messages on it, and that's all you
Speaker 1: could do. You could you could read through all those messages.
Speaker 1: But if someone sent you a page, you know, you
Speaker 1: would look down you see, oh, I've got a message
Speaker 1: from so and so. You put the pager down, you
Speaker 1: pick up a phone, you call that person and you know,
Speaker 1: have a discussion and rim. Because of its research in
Speaker 1: two way communication on the Mobo Tex network had come
Speaker 1: up with a way of creating a two way messaging service,
Speaker 1: and the Interactive pager would let you do this. You
Speaker 1: would have a it had a quarty keyboard, and it
Speaker 1: had a little bit a screen that could show up
Speaker 1: to four lines of text and you could get a
Speaker 1: message from someone and you could send a message back.
Speaker 1: So essentially your text messaging. That's that's what this technology
Speaker 1: allowed you to do, which was new. This was not
Speaker 1: something that was generally seen around this time. So suddenly
Speaker 1: you could get a pager that would allow you to
Speaker 1: do more communication where you wouldn't necessarily have to go
Speaker 1: and find a phone or or carry, you know, a
Speaker 1: cell phone. Along with the pager, you could actually communicate
Speaker 1: with people, assuming that they had a device that, you know,
Speaker 1: a pager, that they could use to read the message
Speaker 1: you're sending them. Otherwise it's still whole one way um,
Speaker 1: and it do you know how much it costs? No,
Speaker 1: Actually I don't know that, Okay, So it's a two
Speaker 1: way pager. It also had all the functions of a
Speaker 1: one way pager, so it's not like it's you know,
Speaker 1: limited to that, but a two way pager text only
Speaker 1: four lines of text per screen SIV. And that's not
Speaker 1: including the service fee. That's that's the price of the
Speaker 1: product itself. So if you think about that, a six
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy five dollar two way pager, that's you know,
Speaker 1: that's that's a chunk of change, especially when you can
Speaker 1: go out and buy a fully featured smartphone without a
Speaker 1: contract for around that same amount. I mean, that's pretty impressive.
Speaker 1: It's a different world we live in now. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and from I've never actually seen one of these in person.
Speaker 1: I've seen photos online, but from what I've read, it
Speaker 1: was also a very large device, yeah, compared to especially
Speaker 1: compared to today's technology. It was it was sometimes called
Speaker 1: the RIM nine hundred because that's how many pounds it weighed? No, no,
Speaker 1: it was. But but it had a flip top, you know,
Speaker 1: you would talk, you would lift the lid up and
Speaker 1: that had the screen on it. Then you had the
Speaker 1: full Quarty keyboard beneath you folded it down. It was
Speaker 1: like a brick and uh yeah it was. It was big,
Speaker 1: um and but it kind of paved the way for
Speaker 1: RIM's future. Chris Poulette and I have a lot more
Speaker 1: to say about RIM, but let's take a quick break
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsor. So in ven this is the
Speaker 1: year after they've introduced the interactive pager, RIM becomes a
Speaker 1: publicly traded company on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Right, that
Speaker 1: helped him raise quite a bit of money, about well
Speaker 1: more than a hundred and fifteen million dollars um. Which
Speaker 1: when you're a company that's that's getting its foothold, that
Speaker 1: that's a lot of money. Yeah, that's that's a ton. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so RIM joins other Toronto Stock Exchange staples like
Speaker 1: Poutine and then in what Canadians Are Too Nice to
Speaker 1: be mean to Me? I Love Poutine. In ninety eight,
Speaker 1: Rim introduces the nine fifty wireless handheld device. Now this
Speaker 1: one is a much smaller to a pager. This is
Speaker 1: the one that a lot of people remember when they
Speaker 1: think back to the old rim pagers. This is this
Speaker 1: is the form factor that was really familiar to them. Um.
Speaker 1: And it also introduced uh they licensed to technology from
Speaker 1: Puma Technology, the Intelisinc synchronization platform which actually allowed for
Speaker 1: sinking with the device, and before that it didn't have
Speaker 1: that capability. So now this two way pager has sinking capability,
Speaker 1: so you can sink it with another device, and it
Speaker 1: also could run applications written in CE language. Um oh,
Speaker 1: and I guess we can take just a brief moment
Speaker 1: and and acknowledge the fact that the week we're recording
Speaker 1: this is sadly the same week we learned of the
Speaker 1: passing of the man who wrote the C programming language.
Speaker 1: So uh so rest in peace, Mr Ritchie. So they
Speaker 1: the the RAM nine fifty wireless handheld can run C
Speaker 1: language programs. Actually read about a guy who used to
Speaker 1: have a UH version of Super Mario on this little pager.
Speaker 1: Really yeah, he had a C programming language version of
Speaker 1: Super Mario that he would play on the pager. I
Speaker 1: can't imagine that would be terribly satisfying, but it wasn't interesting.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, and imagine so um and so this one
Speaker 1: again was smaller than the nine hundred that we talked
Speaker 1: about a little bit ago, and it still had the
Speaker 1: quirty keyboard in the little screen right. Um. Yeah. At
Speaker 1: this point, RIM has become one of Canada's fastest growing
Speaker 1: tech companies. Um, you know. And it's actually it's it's
Speaker 1: funny because, um, from what I understand, the campus is
Speaker 1: right there at the University of Waterloo, right next door.
Speaker 1: Essentially um sipening off engineering students as fast as possible
Speaker 1: probably um. But some people have started calling this part
Speaker 1: of you know, the Kitchener Waterloo area as a silicon
Speaker 1: valley north. Um. I don't know that there's much of
Speaker 1: a valley, but you know, I guess it's just the
Speaker 1: the slang for the term. But yeah, ninety nine is
Speaker 1: when they Rim became listed on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange,
Speaker 1: which helped the company get another two fifty million dollars UM.
Speaker 1: And this is the point at which the devices, the
Speaker 1: little buttons on the outside of the devices, are beginning
Speaker 1: to remind some people of of seeds on the outside
Speaker 1: of fruit, which is how apparently the BlackBerry got its name.
Speaker 1: Although when BlackBerry was first announced, it was just a
Speaker 1: wireless email solution. It wasn't specifically UH attributed to a
Speaker 1: particular product, So in other words, you didn't call your
Speaker 1: phone a BlackBerry at this point. Yet the BlackBerry referred
Speaker 1: to the technology that allowed to access email. And this
Speaker 1: is where black BlackBerry introduces the Enterprise server software for
Speaker 1: Microsoft Exchange. So now we've got the devices that will
Speaker 1: allow you to access your corporate email or your Microsoft
Speaker 1: Exchange email if it's not necessarily corporate, it's just that
Speaker 1: was the most common. But it would allow you to
Speaker 1: check email on devices. It still didn't have a phone,
Speaker 1: so this is more like a personal digital assistant. But
Speaker 1: they introduced the RIM eight fifty wireless handheld and which
Speaker 1: looked a lot like the nine fifty, except now the
Speaker 1: eight fifty runs on the data attack wireless network, the
Speaker 1: nine fifties on the mobile text wireless network. So these
Speaker 1: are two different wireless technologies, and that might sound strange
Speaker 1: to you, except that we still see that kind of
Speaker 1: stuff today. I mean we see it in multiple UH
Speaker 1: areas because we've got C d M a versus G
Speaker 1: s M. Those are two different wireless technologies. You've got
Speaker 1: things like y max and LTE. Those are two different
Speaker 1: wireless technology. So uh. In other words, BlackBerry was trying
Speaker 1: to broaden its market by creating devices that could work
Speaker 1: on other wireless networks so that they could reach more consumers.
Speaker 1: And uh, the A fifty is um as as far
Speaker 1: as I can tell, the eight fifty is the device
Speaker 1: that really started the ball rolling in a way, and
Speaker 1: it's the it's the device that got uh people to
Speaker 1: really sit up and take notice, and people wanted to
Speaker 1: buy it. Um right, you know this is this is
Speaker 1: an arrow in a lot. Not everyone still not everyone
Speaker 1: had personal email, the corporate email. Well that was very
Speaker 1: useful and people it was really starting to take off,
Speaker 1: and it was it's important. Now all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: you're able to keep up with things that are going
Speaker 1: on in the office, um conveniently while you are out
Speaker 1: and about, while you're at lunch, um, while you're at home.
Speaker 1: You don't have to find a computer to log in anymore.
Speaker 1: You can just check it. And it's easy to do,
Speaker 1: so easy in fact, that people kind of want to
Speaker 1: do it, which is why you couldn't get people to
Speaker 1: leave them alone. It's also why we call them crackberries. Uh.
Speaker 1: Now after the addictive drug. In two thousand, the RAM
Speaker 1: introduced the eight, fifty seven and the seven wireless handheld devices.
Speaker 1: This is these are the ones that really looked like
Speaker 1: p D as you know, they had the monochrome screening. Uh,
Speaker 1: they had a larger so the screens larger, the quarty
Speaker 1: keyboards spread out there. That these are the devices that
Speaker 1: look a little more squar ish or even rectangular, where
Speaker 1: you've got a lot more real estate for the screens
Speaker 1: and in uh in two thousand one, uh, that's where
Speaker 1: we start getting into some legal issues. So two thousand one,
Speaker 1: a group of investors file a lawsuit in a US
Speaker 1: federal court and they they accuse rim of using of
Speaker 1: infringing on patents held by a patent company called n
Speaker 1: t P. Now you may have heard our Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you heard our our Patent Wars podcast, we talked about
Speaker 1: there were there are companies out there that really what
Speaker 1: they do is they acquire patents and then they either
Speaker 1: license those patents out to other companies that want to
Speaker 1: use the technology, or they sit on the patents and
Speaker 1: wait for someone to infringe on them and then sue
Speaker 1: the dickens out of them. Yeah, that's the problem with
Speaker 1: getting people to sit up and take notice of you.
Speaker 1: That also means that people sit up and take notice
Speaker 1: of you. NTP noticed. Um. Also in two thousand, just
Speaker 1: as a note, the company raised another nine fifty million
Speaker 1: dollars by offering more shares of stock. They were, um
Speaker 1: but yeah, I mean at this point, RIM is a
Speaker 1: well established company two thousand, which is what sixteen years
Speaker 1: or so after it's founding incorporate well formal uh incorporation corporations.
Speaker 1: So um, yeah, I mean at this point they're they're
Speaker 1: a well known tech company. They're they're really making a
Speaker 1: mark in the world. And NTP sits up and goes
Speaker 1: ah harcus. So two thousand two is a huge year
Speaker 1: for for RIM. And they released the BlackBerry five eight
Speaker 1: one zero, which is the first hand held device that
Speaker 1: actually is called a BlackBerry. Uh. The other ones had
Speaker 1: the BlackBerry technology in them, but you didn't necessarily call
Speaker 1: it a BlackBerry, although a lot of people used as
Speaker 1: as kind of the short form version of the name,
Speaker 1: like when you talk about a Windows based computer and
Speaker 1: you call it anc. Yeah. So the BlackBerry five eight
Speaker 1: one zero first, the first true BlackBerry. It was also
Speaker 1: a smartphone, although it required a separate headset to use
Speaker 1: as a phone, and it worked on the GSM network
Speaker 1: had a monochrome screen. And then later that year M
Speaker 1: released the six seven one zero and six seven two
Speaker 1: zero phones, which had integrated phones directly into the hand
Speaker 1: set itself, so you didn't have to have a separate
Speaker 1: headset to use the phone. They also released the six
Speaker 1: five one zero. So this is the other thing about BlackBerry.
Speaker 1: They have really catching names for their devices. Six zero
Speaker 1: was the next Tell device, so it not only had
Speaker 1: the the the BlackBerry email service and all of that
Speaker 1: fun stuff, it also had a walkie talkie feature over
Speaker 1: breaker breaker uh. And then later on they introduced another
Speaker 1: one of the next cells. Uh. Actually a couple of
Speaker 1: years later, but they introduced a next cell phone that
Speaker 1: was the first BlackBerry to hold have a GPS receiver
Speaker 1: in it. Um, they introduced the first c d M
Speaker 1: a BlackBerry, which was the six seven five zero. You're
Speaker 1: never gonna keep all these straight. We should write a
Speaker 1: quiz for this and all they are the numbers, and
Speaker 1: I would just be evil, all right. So then um
Speaker 1: they also introduced a mobile data service which was an
Speaker 1: environment for apps that could access corporate data. Now, RIM
Speaker 1: has never really gotten wholeheartedly into the whole apps game. Uh,
Speaker 1: they a little bit, but not like other companies like
Speaker 1: Apple and Google. So in fact that that kind of
Speaker 1: plays into why they are in the situation they're in
Speaker 1: right now. Um. They also introduced what would later become
Speaker 1: known as the BlackBerry Internet Service, which was what allowed
Speaker 1: people to access email clients that were web based as
Speaker 1: opposed to the Microsoft Exchange stuff. So they could suddenly
Speaker 1: and they can now access not just their corporate email,
Speaker 1: but if they had a web based personal email address,
Speaker 1: they could access that as well. And in two thousand two,
Speaker 1: a jury finds in favor of nt P in their
Speaker 1: their lawsuit about patent infringement and orders RIM to pay
Speaker 1: twenty three point one million dollars. And boy does that
Speaker 1: get more complicated? Yeah, just if just a few months later,
Speaker 1: that was in November, and in in August or two
Speaker 1: thousand three, a judge said that the BlackBerry could not
Speaker 1: be sold in the United States. Yea, um, but RIM
Speaker 1: appealed that decision and yeah, so basically they were allowed
Speaker 1: to pending the result of the appeal. And this was
Speaker 1: important for him because that same year they were the
Speaker 1: company started releasing devices that were aimed more for well,
Speaker 1: we call them pro sumers, right, pro sumer it's kind
Speaker 1: of the early adopters. We've talked about them before in
Speaker 1: the podcast. But they're not not your average consumer because
Speaker 1: the BlackBerry was you know, it's kind of a luxury
Speaker 1: product for anyone who is just interested in a smartphone
Speaker 1: and is not going to get you know, reimbursed by
Speaker 1: their company. But yeah, this was aimed at professionals who
Speaker 1: were interested in smartphones, but they weren't directly tied to
Speaker 1: whatever it is they did for a living, so they
Speaker 1: wanted it as a personal device. Um. So, of course,
Speaker 1: rims very much interested in keeping their their products up
Speaker 1: and running, especially in the United States because that's where
Speaker 1: one of the big markets. That's that's the location of
Speaker 1: a large market. I mean, you know, you've got other
Speaker 1: markets for smartphones, but a lot of those are already
Speaker 1: tied up by phones coming out of Japan. So going
Speaker 1: to two thousand four, uh, here's something interesting. So by
Speaker 1: now they're starting to release Uh. In two thousand three,
Speaker 1: they also started releasing Blackberries that had color screens because
Speaker 1: up to that point, they were all monochrome. But in
Speaker 1: two thousand four, they releases the BlackBerry five seven nine zero,
Speaker 1: which has a monochrome display and no phone. And why
Speaker 1: would they do that because people on the Mobile Tex
Speaker 1: network really wanted to have all these cool features and
Speaker 1: they didn't have a device that would run on Mobile
Speaker 1: Tex network. So the five seven nine zero was the
Speaker 1: first BlackBerry device to run on Mobile Tex. But it
Speaker 1: couldn't have a phone because it was data only and
Speaker 1: they didn't have a void solution. So uh, there there
Speaker 1: you go. Monochrome display. It was like it was like
Speaker 1: a device that looked like it came out two years previously,
Speaker 1: you know, compared to the stuff that had come out
Speaker 1: in two thousand three. Well, two thousand four was important
Speaker 1: for another reason too. That was when, uh, when BlackBerry
Speaker 1: had more than one million subscribers around the world. Um.
Speaker 1: And in two thousand four late uh that an Appeals
Speaker 1: Corps had decided that most of the claims that that
Speaker 1: NTP had brought were were still valid um and news
Speaker 1: for m but they also asked the court asked the
Speaker 1: the lower court um that it made the decision to
Speaker 1: look at the case again. So they had to reopen that,
Speaker 1: and I said that the the original ruling had some
Speaker 1: problems with it, that that the the actual allegations still
Speaker 1: held true, but the ruling itself had problems, so it
Speaker 1: needed to go back into the court system. So then
Speaker 1: get to two thousand and five. Now RIM has over
Speaker 1: five million subscribers, which is enormous growth. Yeah, but it's
Speaker 1: the point at which the RIM is getting to the
Speaker 1: point where I think they're getting a little weary of
Speaker 1: this lawsuit thing. Yeah, so they get so they agreed
Speaker 1: to a settlement. Yeah, a crazy settlement because remember it
Speaker 1: was originally they were gonna have to pay twenty three
Speaker 1: point one million dollars. Now it's four dred and fifty
Speaker 1: million dollars to settle the lawsuit. Yeah, but NTP does
Speaker 1: not seem to um happy to just take that. They
Speaker 1: now in TPS thinking hey, we got a real shot
Speaker 1: of of we smell blood. Yeah, we can we can
Speaker 1: really really uh twist the knife here. And so a
Speaker 1: judge gets kind of fed up with what's going on
Speaker 1: with the the failure to create a deal, and the
Speaker 1: case is sent back to federal court. And uh, and
Speaker 1: so you've got the case going back to federal Court. Uh,
Speaker 1: the RIM appeals to the U. S. Supreme Court. The
Speaker 1: Supreme Court says, no, this needs to go back to
Speaker 1: federal court. Um judge refuses to force in TP to
Speaker 1: actually agree to the four D fifty million dollar settlements.
Speaker 1: So now in t P has a real chance of
Speaker 1: getting even more right. Right. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: in December of two thousand five, they said that they
Speaker 1: would be willing to settle as long as they got
Speaker 1: a five excuse me, a five point seven percent royalty
Speaker 1: for the life of the patents. Yeah, so now that
Speaker 1: would be lucrative. Yeah. This is like in an actor
Speaker 1: landing a deal to gets part of the merchandising rights
Speaker 1: for anything that comes out of the movie that actors in.
Speaker 1: You know, that's where the real money is. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: ticket sales are one thing, but you're going to really
Speaker 1: make it up with those T shirts and action figures.
Speaker 1: And I'm just appealing to my geek friends now. But
Speaker 1: also that same year two thousand five, just to get
Speaker 1: a little bit of positive news out there, Real introduced
Speaker 1: the BlackBerry, which had the first true color screen and
Speaker 1: also introduced themes to the BlackBerry handset. So now that
Speaker 1: that became like the flagship product for for that year. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you've been using a BlackBerry for a long time,
Speaker 1: you might remember the the Brujaja that had come up
Speaker 1: where they were saying in the news that it was
Speaker 1: possible that BlackBerry would have to stop offering service in
Speaker 1: the United States. And that's what we're talking about right now,
Speaker 1: because at this point there uh NTP is basically saying, hey, look,
Speaker 1: well we'll allow thirty days before cut off, and government
Speaker 1: users don't necessarily have to have their service cut off
Speaker 1: right because black we can't settle they're gonna have to stop.
Speaker 1: Blackberries became really really important for government officials, for military
Speaker 1: and for first responders because it provided a fast and
Speaker 1: secure way to communicate. So, uh, you know that it
Speaker 1: could have had catastrophic results if all service had been
Speaker 1: cut off. Can you imagine, I mean, you could fire
Speaker 1: departments not being able to communicate as as easily as
Speaker 1: they had been. It would be a massive blow. And
Speaker 1: there's some things that you know, you just gotta say, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: look we're going to allow these services to continue even
Speaker 1: if we can't come to an agreement, because otherwise it
Speaker 1: would be catastrophic. So uh, at the same time, Bassili
Speaker 1: was saying that they that the company was looking at
Speaker 1: ways to create alternatives to the technology it was in
Speaker 1: question so that they could continue offering service even if
Speaker 1: the the the questionable technology was shut down. So this
Speaker 1: is kind of a work around they're looking at. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: we're gonna get right back to the story of RIM,
Speaker 1: but I gotta answer this message on my BlackBerry phone
Speaker 1: that I'm imaginarily pointing at. So let's take a quick
Speaker 1: break and thank our sponsor. Now, we then get into
Speaker 1: a point where RIM agrees to pay in TP a
Speaker 1: settlement of six hundred and twelve and a half million dollars.
Speaker 1: And um, that's the settlement and for a quote perpetual
Speaker 1: paid up license going forward end quote. Yeah, and uh
Speaker 1: it's pretty huge here. But um, you know, we're still
Speaker 1: at this point that this it has not actually been settled,
Speaker 1: and uh, it's it's really getting ugly and and people
Speaker 1: who are like the stakeholders in the company are nervous
Speaker 1: because you don't know if the service is going to
Speaker 1: be cut off or not. So RIM is actually really
Speaker 1: suffering at this point. Well, they've they continue this, uh,
Speaker 1: this court case, which at this point was actually more
Speaker 1: interesting too to the technology world then the actual products
Speaker 1: that Blackberries putting out. UM. It also was starting to
Speaker 1: drive business over to Palm. You know, as people were saying,
Speaker 1: I don't know if this BlackBerry is going to be
Speaker 1: working in six months, I need to go get a
Speaker 1: device that I know I can depend on. And so
Speaker 1: Trio sales actually really took off at this point. UM.
Speaker 1: But eventually the the whole mess with NTP gets settled
Speaker 1: and and UH as a result, the shares actually get
Speaker 1: a boost and UH and things start to look better
Speaker 1: for REM. Although in two thousand seven, RIM had to
Speaker 1: pay two million dollars to UM to the United States
Speaker 1: because of some problems with their stock options. UH. They
Speaker 1: were issuing stock options that less than fair market value
Speaker 1: to some of their executives, and so Lazarides and Basili
Speaker 1: had to pay around five million dollars apiece to cover
Speaker 1: the cost of the accounting review that was ordered by
Speaker 1: the United States government, and UM lots of lots of
Speaker 1: executives had to pay back some some money because the
Speaker 1: stock options they have been granted were granted at the
Speaker 1: wrong price. So again kind of a black mark on RIM.
Speaker 1: Well at this point, now that the lawsuit is settled. UH,
Speaker 1: they're able to focus on on business again in a
Speaker 1: more unified way. They're not their attention is not divided anymore. UM.
Speaker 1: In late two thousand seven, UH, there were more than
Speaker 1: ten million BlackBerry subscribers. UM. You'll remember in two thousand
Speaker 1: seven to other products were announced that would eventually cause
Speaker 1: great problems for RIM. That that would be the iPhone
Speaker 1: and the Google Android operating system. UM. But in the meaning,
Speaker 1: but keeping in mind that Blackberries still established as the business,
Speaker 1: the the the corporate UM solution for messaging and for
Speaker 1: for for you know, smartphones. UH. You know, the Trio
Speaker 1: was was still pretty far behind UM. And it was
Speaker 1: also still very much a an enterprise product. It wasn't
Speaker 1: a consumer thing. UM. Alcatel Lucented had an agreement to
Speaker 1: distribute Blackberries in China, which you know is a huge
Speaker 1: market UM. And as a matter of fact, that that
Speaker 1: the stock boost from that actually made RIM the most
Speaker 1: valuable company in Canada based on market capitalization. UM. Then
Speaker 1: in two thousand seven, again they released the BlackBerry Professional
Speaker 1: Software UM, which allowed companies with their own email server
Speaker 1: UM in house to UH to transmit to Blackberries UM,
Speaker 1: enabling people who work in I t for many companies
Speaker 1: to get messages at two in the morning going the
Speaker 1: servers down. UM. It thrilled them to no end. I
Speaker 1: am sure I've been around people for whom that is
Speaker 1: a oh I gotta go. UM and uh They actually
Speaker 1: had their first BlackBerry store in Farmington Hills, Michigan, UM
Speaker 1: along with the cell phone company Wireless Giant UM, so
Speaker 1: that that was sort of a unique thing for the
Speaker 1: time to UM. They added more subscribers again, one point
Speaker 1: six five million by the end the very end of
Speaker 1: two thousand seven, pushing him up to twelve million. UM
Speaker 1: and uh rim started its own copyright UM not copy
Speaker 1: right its own patent case the year after UH telling
Speaker 1: saying that Motorola had and fringed on some of its patents. UM. So,
Speaker 1: you know, Motorola sued them back, of course, as is
Speaker 1: typically the case in these situations, saying that some of
Speaker 1: the their u S patents that they owned that BlackBerry
Speaker 1: was infringing on. And then they started not naming their
Speaker 1: stuff with boring old names. This is when the you
Speaker 1: could tell that the influence of the consumer smartphone was
Speaker 1: having an effect on BlackBerry when they came out with
Speaker 1: the Bold in two thousand and eight. I remember the Bold,
Speaker 1: the Curve, the pearl um. All of these devices were
Speaker 1: aimed at various slices of the consumer market with an
Speaker 1: attempt to try and gain traction there. Although, BlackBerry got
Speaker 1: a lot of criticism from technology journalists and analysts, saying
Speaker 1: that while they were redesigning the hardware and trying to
Speaker 1: make that more uh the more attractive to the average consumer,
Speaker 1: they hadn't done a lot of work with the operating system,
Speaker 1: and the operating system had remained pretty much the same
Speaker 1: over the last several years, and that as a result,
Speaker 1: it was starting to look stale, particularly against things like
Speaker 1: the iPhone or Google Android. And another part is, again
Speaker 1: i mentioned earlier, BlackBerry just didn't support apps to the
Speaker 1: same extent as Android or the iPhone. And you think,
Speaker 1: you know, apps really extend the functionality of these devices.
Speaker 1: You know, you can suddenly do all these amazing things
Speaker 1: on the device. Sometimes it's games, sometimes it's a service
Speaker 1: that will let you, um uh, navigate the world more easily,
Speaker 1: or to navigate shopping more easily. BlackBerry didn't really have
Speaker 1: that to the extent that iPhone and Google did, and
Speaker 1: as a result, if you're a consumer, you know you're
Speaker 1: not just looking at most consumers I guess are not
Speaker 1: just looking at the form factor, although that definitely plays
Speaker 1: a role in your choice, but just why can you
Speaker 1: do with it? And really BlackBerry was falling behind and
Speaker 1: so UM some people said that might have been what
Speaker 1: led BlackBerry to introduce the Playbook, which was Blackberries or
Speaker 1: Rims tablet device seven inch tablet and uh, it was
Speaker 1: a very snazzy tablet of the operating system was very smooth.
Speaker 1: It was not the standard BlackBerry operating system. They had
Speaker 1: gone to another company to outsource that and UH, and
Speaker 1: it would support apps. UH. The interesting some interesting things
Speaker 1: about the the playbook and we've done a whole podcast
Speaker 1: about the playbook, so you can listen to that as well.
Speaker 1: But some of the interesting points about it or that
Speaker 1: you could not access contacts and email and then that
Speaker 1: sort of information with the playbook on its own. You
Speaker 1: had to pair it with a BlackBerry smartphone. And the
Speaker 1: idea here was that if someone were to get hold
Speaker 1: of your tablet, they wouldn't be able to access your
Speaker 1: corporate information because it was not stored on the device itself.
Speaker 1: It could only be accessed when paired with a smartphone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, UH. In a lot of enterprise UH situations,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of proprietary data that needs to be
Speaker 1: protected business plans and UH you know Apple is We've
Speaker 1: talked about how secret Apple is. There far from the
Speaker 1: only UH company in all forms of business that wants
Speaker 1: to keep its trade secrets private. Um. That's that's one
Speaker 1: of the big reasons why UH I T professionals are
Speaker 1: still very big on blackberriers, that they they have very
Speaker 1: strong security versus UH people. That was one of the
Speaker 1: big arguments. They said, well, why don't why don't more
Speaker 1: people switch to the iPhone If people like the iPhone,
Speaker 1: they said, well, the iPhone is not as capable. Keeping
Speaker 1: in mind this is you know, some time ago and
Speaker 1: things have changed somewhat, but you know, that was the
Speaker 1: big argument right away, was well, you know, the iPhone
Speaker 1: may be nice, but it doesn't have the same kind
Speaker 1: of security that a BlackBerry does. A lot of the
Speaker 1: transmissions on a BlackBerry are encrypted. Yeah, and they're passing
Speaker 1: through Blackberries servers yes, um, which is, by the way,
Speaker 1: are most of which are located in Canada. Which that
Speaker 1: was part of the problem when when Barack Obama wanted
Speaker 1: to see if he could keep his BlackBerry once he
Speaker 1: became president of the United States. That was one of
Speaker 1: the issues that was brought up was the fact that
Speaker 1: this this data would be passing through servers in another country.
Speaker 1: And we all know that Canada is poised to strike
Speaker 1: at the United States at a moment's notice, So they
Speaker 1: wanted to be sure that the president's information would remain
Speaker 1: private and and untouched by anyone in Canada who had
Speaker 1: designs on the presidency of the United States of America. Well,
Speaker 1: it might be exaggerating a little, but there was there
Speaker 1: was an issue well, and and the thing is too
Speaker 1: that it was passing out of the government's hands and
Speaker 1: into the hands of a private company to as well.
Speaker 1: That's that's another issue. Even if even if rem we're
Speaker 1: located in the United States, there would be some serious
Speaker 1: questions about that kind of thing. But the BlackBerry remains
Speaker 1: a company to which many people are extremely loyal. UM.
Speaker 1: They have made good products with a good reputation for
Speaker 1: many years, and the UH the enterprise security layer is
Speaker 1: also something that gives people in business a lot of
Speaker 1: confidence in the product. Unfortunately, UM, at the time we
Speaker 1: are recording this. BlackBerry has been fending off a pr
Speaker 1: um onslaught that they've had to deal with because the
Speaker 1: servers and apparently there was a machine that went down
Speaker 1: in the United Kingdom one of their course switches. Now,
Speaker 1: a course switch is a device that helps route traffic.
Speaker 1: It takes incoming traffic and sends it to the next
Speaker 1: major hop along the line. But if you're talking about
Speaker 1: a course switch, that's something that's located on the backbone
Speaker 1: of a system. So that's a major major point of failure.
Speaker 1: And like many companies, RIM has entrusted its equipment to
Speaker 1: a redundant backup system. Also in this case which failed UM,
Speaker 1: so the company throttled its network traffic all around the world.
Speaker 1: And so for the past few days, before the day
Speaker 1: we were recording this um in in mid October of
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven, BlackBerry has been suffering from people being
Speaker 1: very upset about it, the traffic disruptions and um As
Speaker 1: a result, a lot of people have been questioning whether,
Speaker 1: as BlackBerry has been behind UH the Android and iOS
Speaker 1: operating systems for the past couple of years in terms
Speaker 1: of subscriber growth, whether BlackBerry will continue as a viable
Speaker 1: option for for enterprises, because both Apple and Google see
Speaker 1: opportunities in the enterprise market. Yeah, this was This was
Speaker 1: particularly bad timing for this to happen for to RIM
Speaker 1: because you've got You've got them in a precarious position there.
Speaker 1: Their sales have have had some problems over the last
Speaker 1: few quarters. They've had revenue problems over the last few quarters.
Speaker 1: The company looked like a company that's in trouble, and
Speaker 1: people were pointing at the operating system looking out a date.
Speaker 1: Although um, black Rim is supposed to to introduce a
Speaker 1: new operating system any day now, um, But for this
Speaker 1: to happen right after the iPhone four s announcement, so
Speaker 1: you've got a new iPhone on the market, and the
Speaker 1: upcoming Google Android ice Cream Sandwich announcement, so you're gonna
Speaker 1: have a new version of the Android operating system. Plus
Speaker 1: the release of iOS five. The release of iOS five,
Speaker 1: the release of a new Samsung Android phone that's supposed
Speaker 1: to be really advanced. These are all bad things for
Speaker 1: to to You know, it's all happening around the same time,
Speaker 1: and for RIM to suffer a catstrophic failure like this
Speaker 1: when everybody else is releasing positive news that it's it's
Speaker 1: tough and um and to be fair, you know, it
Speaker 1: wasn't that information necessarily got lost during this process. Most
Speaker 1: of it was just delayed by hours, like there'll be
Speaker 1: a three hour delay from when someone would send something
Speaker 1: and when you might receive it, which of course is
Speaker 1: bad if it's an urgent matter. But anyway, so they're
Speaker 1: dealing with that right now. They're also dealing with other issues,
Speaker 1: like there are governments around the world that want to
Speaker 1: be able to access the information that's sent across the
Speaker 1: BlackBerry UM network, and so that raises ethical questions like
Speaker 1: do you do you agree to do that? Do you
Speaker 1: agree to give the governments the access to the information?
Speaker 1: Do you keep it encrypted? Because you know, you're trying
Speaker 1: to serve your customers and m has had to deal
Speaker 1: with some pretty sticky situations there. They also got some
Speaker 1: bad press inn during the riots in London because it
Speaker 1: turned out that a lot of the kids in London
Speaker 1: have Blackberries and they were using the BlackBerry Messaging Service,
Speaker 1: which is an encrypted service to send messages between each other.
Speaker 1: Two targets Pacific businesses during the riots. So it was
Speaker 1: it was it would have required the cooperation of BlackBerry
Speaker 1: itself to provide the government. Uh, you know, they couldn't
Speaker 1: be spied upon, right, They would have to get BlackBerry
Speaker 1: to share that information with them. Of course, BlackBerry agreed
Speaker 1: to cooperate. But it doesn't help again that that for
Speaker 1: a lot of people, that the problem, you big pr problem.
Speaker 1: Yet has been a rough year for Research in Motion.
Speaker 1: Now some people have already said that this might be
Speaker 1: the beginning of the end, or that perhaps Research Emotions
Speaker 1: should look at selling off its assets to other companies
Speaker 1: and just kind of dissolving. So so elements of BlackBerry
Speaker 1: would continue to live on, it's just they would go
Speaker 1: under a different corporate name. People said the same thing
Speaker 1: about Apple about twenty years ago. Right, So there's there's
Speaker 1: always the chance that that Research in Motion could turn
Speaker 1: this around and become a very powerful player in the
Speaker 1: telecom space. Again, I mean, there's nothing necessarily stopping them.
Speaker 1: It's just that the you know, the odds are definitely
Speaker 1: stacking against them. But that doesn't mean they can't overcome
Speaker 1: those odds. So we'll have to watch and see and
Speaker 1: find out what happens. We'll also have to see if
Speaker 1: if they they have a change in leadership, because for
Speaker 1: the last couple of years. RIM has also received a
Speaker 1: lot of criticism about having co c e O s
Speaker 1: and saying that that kind of sends a mixed message
Speaker 1: to shareholders and it might be better to have a
Speaker 1: single person hold the position of CEO to give a
Speaker 1: unified vision for the company and be able to message
Speaker 1: that out to everybody. Both consumers and retailers are shareholders
Speaker 1: everyone and and employees of rem Well. That wraps up
Speaker 1: another classic episode of tech Stuff. I hope you enjoyed
Speaker 1: this march down memory lane. If you want to learn
Speaker 1: more about the podcast, including ways to contact us, head
Speaker 1: on over to tech Stuff podcast dot com. And don't
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