WEBVTT - The Story of RIM 0:00:00.280 --> 0:00:02.960 Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray. 0:00:03.160 --> 0:00:08.920 It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With 0:00:09.000 --> 0:00:17.599 tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello everyone, 0:00:17.720 --> 0:00:20.560 welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Billett, and 0:00:20.600 --> 0:00:23.000 I am an editor at how stuff works dot com. 0:00:23.040 --> 0:00:25.040 Sitting across from me, as he always does when when 0:00:25.040 --> 0:00:29.160 you record podcasts, and occasionally other times, his senior writer 0:00:29.240 --> 0:00:32.040 Jonathan Strickland, he could play a guitar just like he 0:00:32.159 --> 0:00:36.720 was ringing a bell. Nice of you to be good. Yeah, 0:00:36.760 --> 0:00:38.839 so you gotta you gotta make a leap on that one. 0:00:39.000 --> 0:00:42.640 It's not just the song. Who who made that song famous? 0:00:42.960 --> 0:00:46.840 And what was that guy's name? And now it makes sense, 0:00:46.920 --> 0:00:52.320 we're gonna talk about the story of m Yes, and uh, 0:00:52.520 --> 0:00:55.319 you know, I think RIM is a less famous name 0:00:55.320 --> 0:00:58.360 than the name of its flagship product. But we are 0:00:58.400 --> 0:01:01.720 talking about Research in Motion, which is a Canadian company. Uh, 0:01:01.760 --> 0:01:04.200 several people have written in to ask us if we 0:01:04.240 --> 0:01:06.560 could talk about it. Yeah, lots of lots of people 0:01:06.600 --> 0:01:09.200 were interested in this, and we've referred to RIM quite 0:01:09.240 --> 0:01:12.880 a few times in other podcasts. Because the flagship product 0:01:12.920 --> 0:01:16.920 that Chris was alluding to is the BlackBerry, which is 0:01:16.920 --> 0:01:20.720 one of the smartphones that really kind of uh well, really, 0:01:20.760 --> 0:01:23.800 the BlackBerry was the smartphone for the longest time. I mean, 0:01:23.800 --> 0:01:27.320 the BlackBerry line was pretty much the smartphone that everyone 0:01:27.440 --> 0:01:31.319 was familiar with and very few people outside of the 0:01:31.360 --> 0:01:36.080 corporate world owned. But uh, you know, RIM became famous 0:01:36.120 --> 0:01:39.160 because they had the company had this line of smartphones 0:01:39.280 --> 0:01:43.160 and they had kind of a almost a lock on 0:01:43.200 --> 0:01:46.520 the smartphone market. I mean really the only major competitor 0:01:46.600 --> 0:01:48.720 in the United States anyway, and other parts of the 0:01:48.760 --> 0:01:50.520 world that was different, but in the United States, the 0:01:50.520 --> 0:01:53.200 other major competitor was Palm. Yes, so you had like 0:01:53.240 --> 0:01:55.440 the Palm Trio and then you had the BlackBerry, and 0:01:55.480 --> 0:02:00.000 you had people who were fanatically devoted to either, although 0:02:00.040 --> 0:02:03.360 BlackBerry again still had more of a corporate kind of 0:02:03.720 --> 0:02:08.240 culture to it because they RIM had incorporated the Microsoft 0:02:08.240 --> 0:02:13.919 Exchange server software in the BlackBerry form factor very early on, 0:02:14.360 --> 0:02:16.720 so it was very useful for anyone who worked for 0:02:16.720 --> 0:02:20.560 a company that used Microsoft Exchange servers, and that's quite 0:02:20.600 --> 0:02:23.000 a few of them. Of course, lots of people are 0:02:23.120 --> 0:02:26.359 using lots of companies are using Outlook essentially as their 0:02:26.400 --> 0:02:29.919 main male feature that you know, there are other companies 0:02:29.919 --> 0:02:33.720 that use different servers for email, but the Microsoft Exchange 0:02:33.760 --> 0:02:36.440 server is incredibly popular. But before we get into all 0:02:36.480 --> 0:02:38.440 of that, we kind of need to go and talk 0:02:38.520 --> 0:02:42.639 about the founding of this company, which goes all the 0:02:42.639 --> 0:02:47.840 way back to nine Yeah. Yeah, now of course, uh 0:02:48.200 --> 0:02:50.480 actually in in in a way, it goes back a 0:02:50.520 --> 0:02:53.760 little farther than that, um, you know, and you'd have 0:02:53.840 --> 0:02:59.280 to look to the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. 0:02:59.520 --> 0:03:03.480 And basically, uh, there was a student there named Mike 0:03:03.560 --> 0:03:07.440 Lazaridis and uh you know he was he was into 0:03:07.720 --> 0:03:11.160 electrical engineering. He was in a computer science and uh 0:03:11.280 --> 0:03:14.080 he had been working with a company that, uh, maybe 0:03:14.120 --> 0:03:15.600 we should talk about in the future. I don't know, 0:03:15.800 --> 0:03:19.760 Control Data UM, long known as a one of the 0:03:19.840 --> 0:03:24.239 computer pioneers UM, and he had been working with that 0:03:24.240 --> 0:03:28.360 that company when he was in college. UM. But basically 0:03:28.480 --> 0:03:31.600 he was working on a way to uh on a 0:03:31.639 --> 0:03:34.639 on a project called budget And no, I'm not talking 0:03:34.680 --> 0:03:39.440 about the percussionist for Susie and the benches thinking of 0:03:39.440 --> 0:03:43.040 a bird or or that either it actually was a 0:03:43.080 --> 0:03:48.200 way to display information on TVs UM and uh. He 0:03:48.200 --> 0:03:50.200 he like many of the people we have talked about 0:03:50.240 --> 0:03:52.600 when we talked about the tech pioneers. Came up with 0:03:52.640 --> 0:03:57.960 this idea even before he UH finished school, and he 0:03:58.080 --> 0:04:01.720 dropped out of the University of Water before before finishing school, 0:04:02.320 --> 0:04:05.280 which makes him very similar to other pioneers that we've 0:04:05.320 --> 0:04:09.480 talked about, Yes and so, UM and so he basically 0:04:09.520 --> 0:04:11.960 decided to UH to give it a go and and 0:04:12.040 --> 0:04:15.520 leave school, and UH came up with a company named 0:04:15.600 --> 0:04:20.120 Paradigm Research, except that name was already taken UM and 0:04:20.160 --> 0:04:23.040 they were trying. He tried several different names, ended up 0:04:23.120 --> 0:04:27.120 with inspired by the the phrase poetry in motion, decided 0:04:27.160 --> 0:04:30.279 to go with Research in Motion and the company was, 0:04:30.360 --> 0:04:34.599 as Jonathan pointed out, officially became incorporated officially on March 0:04:34.680 --> 0:04:39.920 seventh night. Four Yeah. He received a essentially a loan 0:04:40.080 --> 0:04:42.880 from the Canadian government to help this, and he also 0:04:43.279 --> 0:04:47.200 had money invested by family and friends. UH. He and 0:04:47.360 --> 0:04:50.640 a fellow student, fellow by the name of Douglas Freegan 0:04:51.240 --> 0:04:54.640 founded this company together. UM. Freagan became the vice president 0:04:54.680 --> 0:05:00.240 of operations. UH Lazarides became the president and CEO UM 0:05:00.440 --> 0:05:05.240 and UH and interestingly enough, we're back just to jump 0:05:05.240 --> 0:05:09.839 ahead just very quickly. A. Lazarides is still a CEO 0:05:10.560 --> 0:05:13.839 of rem it's RIM's got an interesting corporate structure and 0:05:13.880 --> 0:05:17.120 that it has two CEOs. And we'll get into more 0:05:17.160 --> 0:05:20.000 about that in a few, um, a few minutes when 0:05:20.000 --> 0:05:25.479 we jump ahead in in RIM's history, now after the founding, 0:05:25.520 --> 0:05:28.479 what's the next piece of information you have? Because I 0:05:28.560 --> 0:05:32.520 jump ahead quite a few years, well four years? Well 0:05:32.560 --> 0:05:36.200 they Uh, the thing is, um, the budgee didn't take 0:05:36.240 --> 0:05:41.760 off at all, Um, but General Motors needed some LED 0:05:41.880 --> 0:05:45.719 notification systems for their assembly lines. And uh, you know, 0:05:45.760 --> 0:05:48.560 as you might guess, General Motors, especially back in the 0:05:48.600 --> 0:05:52.320 nineteen eighties, would have been a huge corporate client. UM. 0:05:52.360 --> 0:05:55.839 And that was his success, the CDs one system. And 0:05:55.880 --> 0:05:58.839 this was General Motors of Canada. Yeah, so it was 0:05:58.880 --> 0:06:02.320 the Canadian Canadian branch of General Motors. There are quite 0:06:02.320 --> 0:06:04.600 a few plants up there, or were We're at that point. 0:06:04.600 --> 0:06:07.599 They've closed a couple, I think, Um, someone will right 0:06:07.680 --> 0:06:08.960 in and tell me that it's a lot of them. 0:06:08.960 --> 0:06:13.040 I'm sure, but um, and the National Film Board of 0:06:13.080 --> 0:06:15.880 Canada did you know about this? Uh? They needed a 0:06:15.960 --> 0:06:21.000 system for UH synchronizing film editing, and uh RIM built 0:06:21.080 --> 0:06:23.800 a system for them and it actually won an Academy award. 0:06:24.000 --> 0:06:27.520 Is this the digit sink I believe, so the digit 0:06:27.560 --> 0:06:31.039 sinc film key code reader that was actually that took 0:06:31.040 --> 0:06:33.599 a few years too to be introduced, That wasn't didn't 0:06:33.680 --> 0:06:37.360 really hit the market til nineteen. But yeah, REM won 0:06:37.600 --> 0:06:41.760 both an Oscar and an Emmy for this technology. Uh. 0:06:41.760 --> 0:06:44.159 And here's the interesting thing. You start hearing this where 0:06:44.279 --> 0:06:47.839 you know, here we are talking about uh film key 0:06:47.839 --> 0:06:51.560 code readers and and and displays in an industrial automation 0:06:51.960 --> 0:06:54.960 and you're thinking, wait a minute, that doesn't sound like 0:06:54.960 --> 0:06:58.559 a smartphone at all. Well, you're right. Uh, the early 0:06:58.640 --> 0:07:03.000 days of REM, we're not focused specifically on bringing uh 0:07:03.200 --> 0:07:06.640 telecommunications devices to market that you know, it was more 0:07:06.680 --> 0:07:11.800 of a kind of a general purpose research technology firm. 0:07:11.840 --> 0:07:15.320 And so you know, these early days that that kind 0:07:15.360 --> 0:07:17.360 of I don't know, you might want to call it 0:07:17.360 --> 0:07:19.240 a lack of focus, or you may just call it 0:07:19.320 --> 0:07:23.600 that they were being very versatile. Uh, they were diversified, yes, 0:07:23.640 --> 0:07:29.080 diversified good. Yes, they were taking a proactive stance. Um. Yeah, 0:07:29.080 --> 0:07:32.960 it was interesting that they weren't really focused on telecommunications. 0:07:33.000 --> 0:07:36.280 Now now in nine so you know ninety they've they've 0:07:36.360 --> 0:07:38.040 introduced the key code reader. But just a couple of 0:07:38.080 --> 0:07:43.080 years earlier, RIM became the first wireless data technology developer 0:07:43.120 --> 0:07:46.960 in North America and the first company outside of Scandinavia 0:07:47.560 --> 0:07:53.800 to create connectivity products for the mobile texts UH network 0:07:53.840 --> 0:07:57.960 wireless network. Now this was a a wireless network. They 0:07:58.040 --> 0:08:01.840 used radio frequencies. Uh. You is the packet data switching method, 0:08:01.880 --> 0:08:03.880 which we've talked about before in this podcast. You know, 0:08:03.880 --> 0:08:07.600 the way that you send data through packets, but in 0:08:07.600 --> 0:08:10.600 instead of it just being through a wire where you know, 0:08:10.640 --> 0:08:13.840 you would send us through u uh pulses of electricity, 0:08:14.280 --> 0:08:18.440 this would be through radio frequencies and UM, so mobile 0:08:18.480 --> 0:08:21.800 text is that was a data only actually is a 0:08:21.920 --> 0:08:27.640 data only wireless packet switching network. So it wasn't designed 0:08:27.640 --> 0:08:31.760 to carry voice communication. It was just data communication. And 0:08:31.800 --> 0:08:37.520 the earliest products that that RIM focused on weren't consumer products. 0:08:37.559 --> 0:08:41.559 They were all retail products, enterprise products of stuff for 0:08:42.040 --> 0:08:47.640 point of point of sales terminals UH to allow point 0:08:47.640 --> 0:08:53.200 of sales terminals to send information wirelessly to some other machine. 0:08:54.160 --> 0:08:59.400 So again not not like something that you would immediately say, Wow, 0:08:59.440 --> 0:09:02.600 that's that's really awesome. I can't wait to get my 0:09:02.600 --> 0:09:04.720 hands on it, because it just wasn't meant for the 0:09:04.800 --> 0:09:08.080 general consumer. Yeah, well, of course, the business to business 0:09:08.120 --> 0:09:12.600 market is uh can be very very lucrative. Um. And 0:09:12.679 --> 0:09:14.920 at the point, you know, we're talking about the late 0:09:15.000 --> 0:09:18.960 nineteen eighties, early nineteen nineties, Uh not everyone had a 0:09:18.960 --> 0:09:21.160 cell phone. I mean they were they you know, these 0:09:21.200 --> 0:09:24.120 mobile products, and a lot of people had pagers, uh 0:09:24.160 --> 0:09:27.200 in the early nineties and um, of course in in 0:09:27.200 --> 0:09:30.600 the early nineties, that's that's sort of what RIM got into. 0:09:30.679 --> 0:09:34.680 They started looking at the possibilities of two way wireless communications. Yeah, 0:09:34.679 --> 0:09:36.439 that was one of the things they started to really 0:09:36.480 --> 0:09:39.560 research once they got involved in the mobi tex network. 0:09:40.080 --> 0:09:44.960 Now in in nineteen uh so in the introduced the 0:09:45.040 --> 0:09:48.880 mobi Tex Protocol converter, which was the device that allowed 0:09:48.920 --> 0:09:51.280 them to create these products that would allow them to 0:09:51.000 --> 0:09:55.400 to tag on a converter box onto a an existing 0:09:55.440 --> 0:09:58.640 point of sales terminal. Yea. So it's kind of like 0:09:58.800 --> 0:10:02.400 an adapter that you could plug into your system and 0:10:02.520 --> 0:10:06.520 use the equipment you already have, um to have this 0:10:06.600 --> 0:10:10.560 wireless connectivity. Again, just an enterprise sort of thing, a 0:10:10.600 --> 0:10:13.280 retail sort of thing, not a not a consumer thing. Yeah. 0:10:13.320 --> 0:10:16.400 Point of sale is is like at the cash register itself, Yes, 0:10:16.640 --> 0:10:20.280 where you're actually going to buy something. And then in 0:10:22.120 --> 0:10:25.640 another person joins RIM. And this is someone who will 0:10:25.720 --> 0:10:32.280 become very important. It's Jim Bassily and so. And at 0:10:32.320 --> 0:10:36.720 this point, the the CEO role is divided in twain. 0:10:38.040 --> 0:10:42.160 Lazaridis is in charge of things like product development and 0:10:42.240 --> 0:10:47.800 research and Bassilely was sort of the the the financial 0:10:47.880 --> 0:10:53.120 guy and the business development guy, because those two parts 0:10:53.240 --> 0:10:56.839 of the CEO role, you know, just didn't didn't really 0:10:56.960 --> 0:11:00.360 the lazardis wasn't comfortable filling both of those parts of 0:11:00.400 --> 0:11:02.480 the role. He didn't think that he had the financial 0:11:03.200 --> 0:11:07.040 acumen to be able to do this effectively. He thought 0:11:07.080 --> 0:11:09.240 that there'd be a better way of leading this company. 0:11:09.240 --> 0:11:11.280 And so that was Bassili's role when he came on. 0:11:11.520 --> 0:11:13.439 And the two are still co c e O s 0:11:14.000 --> 0:11:19.360 And that has actually led to some criticism of RIM 0:11:19.400 --> 0:11:23.080 throughout its history, but really that criticism has wrapped up 0:11:23.160 --> 0:11:26.840 quite a bit in and we'll we'll talk about that 0:11:26.840 --> 0:11:30.080 when we get a little further in. Yes, Mr Bassili 0:11:30.160 --> 0:11:33.480 actually put a quarter of a million dollars of his 0:11:33.520 --> 0:11:36.320 own money uh into RIM at that point, so that 0:11:36.400 --> 0:11:39.760 was a pretty substantial investment. Wouldn't be the first time 0:11:39.760 --> 0:11:43.800 he would have to pay but we'll get into that too. 0:11:45.000 --> 0:11:48.400 That that that's a there was. Rims also had a 0:11:48.480 --> 0:11:52.880 history of some pretty nasty legal battles, but that's that's 0:11:52.880 --> 0:11:56.120 in the late nineties and further on. Yeah, as a 0:11:56.120 --> 0:11:58.200 matter of fact, a couple of the timelines that I 0:11:58.240 --> 0:12:02.720 looked at, we're almost all about the legal battles. Yeah. No, 0:12:02.880 --> 0:12:05.040 there's a there's a stretch in the two thousand era 0:12:05.160 --> 0:12:07.600 where that's you know, there was no focus on the 0:12:07.600 --> 0:12:10.400 actual products, at least in the research I looked at 0:12:10.440 --> 0:12:14.960 as well. So in UH in ninety four we've got 0:12:15.360 --> 0:12:18.680 RIM offering its own point of sales terminal. So now 0:12:18.840 --> 0:12:22.920 now the technology has been incorporated directly into UH into 0:12:23.040 --> 0:12:26.640 terminals so that people can companies can buy them directly 0:12:26.679 --> 0:12:29.319 from RIM and they don't have to try and incorporate 0:12:29.440 --> 0:12:34.440 one technology with another. UH. And then in nine RIM 0:12:34.440 --> 0:12:38.640 introduces the Freedom, which is a pc m c I 0:12:38.840 --> 0:12:42.960 a radio modem for computers. PC m c I A 0:12:43.080 --> 0:12:47.400 stands for Personal Computer Memory Card. International Association has several 0:12:47.440 --> 0:12:50.360 different types of cards, some of which are used to 0:12:50.480 --> 0:12:53.640 add memory to a computer, but the type two pc 0:12:54.080 --> 0:12:58.160 m c I a card is meant as a modem card. Right, 0:12:58.240 --> 0:13:02.120 So It's basically a a a card that you plug 0:13:02.200 --> 0:13:07.679 into the insides of your computer. Ye, mainly laptops. Actually, 0:13:07.679 --> 0:13:10.080 a lot of laptops had expansion ports that you could 0:13:10.240 --> 0:13:13.360 you could plug a card into that one expansion port 0:13:13.720 --> 0:13:15.960 and it would allow you to do whatever, you know, 0:13:16.160 --> 0:13:18.160 increase the memory. And in this case, what it was 0:13:18.200 --> 0:13:20.440 doing is it was giving you a radio modem so 0:13:20.480 --> 0:13:23.360 that you can have wireless connectivity with your laptop, which 0:13:23.360 --> 0:13:27.800 was you know, that was a pretty new thing. There 0:13:27.800 --> 0:13:30.800 weren't a whole lot of solutions out there, and so 0:13:30.960 --> 0:13:33.360 RIM was kind of getting into that. And in nineties six, 0:13:34.320 --> 0:13:38.760 RIM introduced the interactive pager, which is probably the most 0:13:39.080 --> 0:13:42.800 one of the most irritating lee spelled products of all time. 0:13:42.960 --> 0:13:46.280 Why because it has an act sign for the instead 0:13:46.280 --> 0:13:49.920 of a so that that irritates me. Well it um. 0:13:49.960 --> 0:13:52.920 It was sort of a revolutionary product. It's time though, 0:13:52.960 --> 0:13:56.920 because most pagers, uh, you know, we're one way. Yeah. 0:13:57.000 --> 0:13:59.080 It meant that if you had a pager, you could 0:13:59.080 --> 0:14:01.400 receive messages on it, and that's all you could do. 0:14:01.640 --> 0:14:04.280 You could you could read through all those messages. But 0:14:04.440 --> 0:14:06.400 if someone sent you a page, you know, you would 0:14:06.440 --> 0:14:08.800 look down you see, oh, I've got a message from 0:14:08.800 --> 0:14:11.000 so and so, you put the pager down, you pick 0:14:11.080 --> 0:14:13.400 up a phone, you call that person and you know, 0:14:13.600 --> 0:14:17.280 have a discussion and rim. Because of its research in 0:14:17.440 --> 0:14:21.200 two way communication on the mob Tex network had come 0:14:21.280 --> 0:14:24.120 up with a way of creating a two way messaging service, 0:14:24.800 --> 0:14:27.520 and the Interactive pager would let you do this. You 0:14:27.560 --> 0:14:30.320 would have a it had a quarty keyboard, and it 0:14:30.400 --> 0:14:32.320 had a little bitty screen that could show up to 0:14:32.360 --> 0:14:35.320 four lines of text and you could get a message 0:14:35.360 --> 0:14:37.080 from someone and you could send a message back. So 0:14:37.200 --> 0:14:41.400 essentially your text messaging. That's that's what this technology allowed 0:14:41.440 --> 0:14:43.800 you to do, which was new. This was not something 0:14:43.800 --> 0:14:47.080 that was generally seen around this time. So suddenly you 0:14:47.160 --> 0:14:49.640 could get a pager that would allow you to do 0:14:49.960 --> 0:14:52.840 more communication where you wouldn't necessarily have to go and 0:14:52.880 --> 0:14:56.040 find a phone or or carry, you know, a cell phone. 0:14:56.080 --> 0:14:58.800 Along with the pager, you could actually communicate with people, 0:14:58.800 --> 0:15:01.360 assuming that they had a device that you know, a pager, 0:15:01.440 --> 0:15:05.280 that they could use to read the message you're sending them. 0:15:05.280 --> 0:15:07.840 Otherwise it's still all one way, um and it do 0:15:07.920 --> 0:15:09.720 you know how much it costs? No? Actually I don't 0:15:09.720 --> 0:15:12.840 know that, Okay, So it's a two way pager. It 0:15:12.920 --> 0:15:14.840 also had all the functions of a one way pager, 0:15:14.880 --> 0:15:17.200 so it's not like it's you know, limited to that, 0:15:17.360 --> 0:15:21.680 but a two way pager text only four lines of 0:15:21.720 --> 0:15:28.000 text per screen. SI And that's not including the service fee. 0:15:28.360 --> 0:15:31.680 That's that's the price of the product itself. So if 0:15:31.680 --> 0:15:34.600 you think about that, a six hundred and seventy five 0:15:34.680 --> 0:15:38.400 dollar two way pager, that's you know, that's that's a 0:15:38.640 --> 0:15:41.160 chunk of change, especially when you can go out and 0:15:41.160 --> 0:15:45.840 buy a fully featured smartphone without a contract for around 0:15:45.880 --> 0:15:50.160 that same amount. I mean, that's pretty impressive. It's a 0:15:50.200 --> 0:15:52.720 different world we live in now. Yeah. Yeah, and from 0:15:52.880 --> 0:15:55.000 I've never actually seen one of these in person. I've 0:15:55.000 --> 0:15:58.160 seen photos online, but from what I've read, it was 0:15:58.200 --> 0:16:02.320 also a very large device, yeah, compared to especially compared 0:16:02.360 --> 0:16:05.640 to today's technology. It was. It was sometimes called the 0:16:05.720 --> 0:16:09.920 Rim nine hundred because that's how many pounds it weighed. No, no, 0:16:10.040 --> 0:16:12.000 it was. But but it had a flip top, you know, 0:16:12.000 --> 0:16:14.520 you would talk, you would lift the lid up and 0:16:14.520 --> 0:16:16.040 that had the screen on it. Then you had the 0:16:16.040 --> 0:16:19.040 full quarty keyboard beneath you folded it down. It was 0:16:19.120 --> 0:16:21.600 like a brick and uh yeah it was it was big, 0:16:22.000 --> 0:16:25.880 um and it but it kind of paved the way 0:16:25.960 --> 0:16:29.520 for RIM's future. So in ven, this is the year 0:16:29.600 --> 0:16:33.040 after they've introduced the interactive pager, RIM becomes a publicly 0:16:33.080 --> 0:16:36.120 traded company on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Right, that helped 0:16:36.160 --> 0:16:38.600 him raise quite a bit of money, about well more 0:16:38.640 --> 0:16:42.160 than a hundred and fifteen million dollars um. Which when 0:16:42.200 --> 0:16:45.720 you're a company that's that's getting its foothold, that that's 0:16:45.720 --> 0:16:48.000 a lot of money. Yeah, that's that's a ton yeah. Yeah. 0:16:48.000 --> 0:16:51.880 And so RIM joins the other Toronto Stock Exchange staples 0:16:51.920 --> 0:16:57.200 like poutine and then in what Canadians are Too Nice 0:16:57.240 --> 0:17:02.720 to be mean to Me? I Love Poutine. In ninety eight, 0:17:02.960 --> 0:17:08.880 Rim introduces the nine fifty wireless handheld device. Now, this 0:17:08.960 --> 0:17:12.639 one is a much smaller to a pager. This is 0:17:12.680 --> 0:17:14.520 the one that a lot of people remember when they 0:17:14.680 --> 0:17:16.719 think back to the old RIM pagers. This is this 0:17:16.760 --> 0:17:19.280 is the form factor that was really familiar to them. 0:17:19.400 --> 0:17:23.879 Um and it also introduced, uh they licensed to technology 0:17:23.920 --> 0:17:29.439 from Puma Technology, the Intel Osinc synchronization platform, which actually 0:17:29.440 --> 0:17:33.560 allowed for sinking with the device, and before that it 0:17:33.600 --> 0:17:37.879 didn't have that capability. So now this two way pager 0:17:37.960 --> 0:17:40.600 has sinking capabilities, so you can sink it with another device, 0:17:41.040 --> 0:17:45.400 and it also could run applications written in CE language. 0:17:46.280 --> 0:17:49.320 Um oh, and I guess we can take just a 0:17:49.320 --> 0:17:52.120 brief moment and and acknowledge the fact that the week 0:17:52.160 --> 0:17:54.920 we're recording this is sadly the same week we learned 0:17:55.000 --> 0:17:57.560 of the passing of the man who wrote the C 0:17:57.760 --> 0:18:03.240 programming language. So, uh so, rest in peace, Mr Ritchie. 0:18:03.920 --> 0:18:08.520 Uh So they the the M nine fifty wireless handheld 0:18:08.840 --> 0:18:12.360 can run CE language programs. Actually read about a guy 0:18:12.359 --> 0:18:18.080 who used to have a version of Super Mario on 0:18:18.680 --> 0:18:22.800 this little pager. Really, yeah, he had a C programming 0:18:22.880 --> 0:18:25.560 language version of Super Mario that he would play on 0:18:25.560 --> 0:18:28.440 this pager. I can't imagine that would be terribly satisfying, 0:18:28.440 --> 0:18:31.400 but it was interesting. Well yeah, I imagine so. Um 0:18:31.480 --> 0:18:34.360 and so this one again was smaller than the nine 0:18:34.400 --> 0:18:36.679 hundred that we talked about a little bit ago, and 0:18:36.680 --> 0:18:39.840 it still had the quirty keyboard in the little screen. Right. 0:18:40.520 --> 0:18:43.760 Um yeah. At this point, RIM has become one of 0:18:44.359 --> 0:18:48.840 Canada's fastest growing tech companies. Um. You know, and it's 0:18:48.880 --> 0:18:51.960 actually it's it's funny because um, from what I understand, 0:18:52.000 --> 0:18:54.320 the campus is right there at the University of Waterloo, 0:18:54.640 --> 0:18:58.800 right next door. Essentially UM syphiling off engineering students as 0:18:58.800 --> 0:19:02.639 fast as possible, probably UM. But some people have started 0:19:02.640 --> 0:19:06.440 calling this part of you know, the Kitchener Waterloo area 0:19:06.600 --> 0:19:10.399 as a silicon valley north. UM. I don't know that 0:19:10.400 --> 0:19:13.600 there's much of a valley, but you know, I guess 0:19:13.600 --> 0:19:16.880 it's just the the slang for the term. But yeah, 0:19:17.040 --> 0:19:20.560 ninety nine is when they rim became listed on the 0:19:20.640 --> 0:19:24.879 NASDAC stock Exchange, which helped the company get another two 0:19:25.320 --> 0:19:28.879 fifty million dollars UM. And this is the point at 0:19:28.920 --> 0:19:32.560 which the device is The little buttons on the outside 0:19:32.560 --> 0:19:35.600 of the devices are beginning to remind some people of 0:19:35.600 --> 0:19:39.919 of seeds on the outside of fruit, which is how 0:19:40.000 --> 0:19:45.040 apparently the BlackBerry got its name. Although when BlackBerry was 0:19:45.160 --> 0:19:49.320 first announced, it was just a wireless email solution. It 0:19:49.440 --> 0:19:54.600 wasn't specifically u attributed to a particular product, so in 0:19:54.600 --> 0:19:57.880 other words, you didn't call your phone a BlackBerry. At 0:19:57.920 --> 0:20:01.760 this point, Yeah, the BlackBerry referred to the technology that 0:20:01.800 --> 0:20:07.240 allowed to access email. And this is where black BlackBerry 0:20:07.240 --> 0:20:10.919 introduces the enterprise server software for Microsoft Exchange. So now 0:20:11.400 --> 0:20:14.080 we've got the devices that will allow you to access 0:20:14.119 --> 0:20:18.320 your corporate email or your Microsoft Exchange email if it's 0:20:18.640 --> 0:20:22.719 not necessarily corporate, it's just that was the most common. UM. 0:20:22.800 --> 0:20:25.359 But it would allow you to check email on devices. 0:20:25.760 --> 0:20:28.160 It still didn't have a phone, so this is more 0:20:28.240 --> 0:20:32.040 like a personal digital assistant. But they introduced the RIM 0:20:32.040 --> 0:20:36.360 eight fifty wireless handheld and which looked a lot like 0:20:36.440 --> 0:20:40.520 the nine fifty, except now the eight fifty runs on 0:20:40.640 --> 0:20:43.760 the data attack wireless network. The nine ft is on 0:20:43.800 --> 0:20:46.639 the mobile text wireless network. So these are two different 0:20:46.640 --> 0:20:49.760 wireless technologies. And that might sound strange to you, except 0:20:49.800 --> 0:20:51.879 that we still see that kind of stuff today. I 0:20:51.880 --> 0:20:54.720 mean we see it in multiple UH areas, because we've 0:20:54.760 --> 0:20:57.920 got C d M A versus G s M. Those 0:20:57.960 --> 0:21:00.240 are two different wireless technologies. You've got things like Wi 0:21:00.320 --> 0:21:03.840 max and LTE, those are two different wireless technology. So uh. 0:21:03.880 --> 0:21:06.719 In other words, BlackBerry was trying to broaden its market 0:21:06.800 --> 0:21:11.440 by creating devices that could work on other wireless networks 0:21:11.480 --> 0:21:15.399 so that they could reach more consumers. And uh, the 0:21:15.480 --> 0:21:19.280 eight fifty is UM as as far as I can tell. 0:21:19.320 --> 0:21:23.199 The eight fifty is the device that really started the 0:21:23.240 --> 0:21:26.840 ball rolling in a way and just it's the it's 0:21:26.880 --> 0:21:30.520 the device that got uh people to really sit up 0:21:30.520 --> 0:21:33.920 and take notice, and people wanted to buy it. Um right, 0:21:34.080 --> 0:21:36.119 you know this is this is a narrow and a 0:21:36.160 --> 0:21:40.119 lot not everyone still not everyone had personal email, the 0:21:40.200 --> 0:21:43.240 corporate email. Well that was very useful and people it 0:21:43.320 --> 0:21:46.160 was really starting to take off and it was it's important. 0:21:46.440 --> 0:21:49.080 Now all of a sudden, you're able to keep up 0:21:49.160 --> 0:21:51.880 with things that are going on in the office, um 0:21:51.920 --> 0:21:56.560 conveniently while you are out and about, while you're at lunch, um, 0:21:56.720 --> 0:21:58.600 while you're at home. You don't have to find a 0:21:58.640 --> 0:22:01.160 computer to log in and more. You can just check 0:22:01.200 --> 0:22:03.960 it and it's easy to do, so easy in fact, 0:22:04.000 --> 0:22:06.520 that people kind of want to do it, which is 0:22:06.520 --> 0:22:10.200 why you couldn't get people to leave them alone. It's 0:22:10.440 --> 0:22:14.320 also why we call them crackberries. Uh now after the 0:22:14.359 --> 0:22:18.240 addictive drug. In two thousand, the RIM introduced the eight 0:22:18.280 --> 0:22:21.439 fifty seven and the ninety seven wireless handheld devices. This 0:22:21.520 --> 0:22:23.119 is these are the ones that really looked like p 0:22:23.200 --> 0:22:26.520 D as you know, they had the monochrome screen. Uh, 0:22:26.560 --> 0:22:29.080 they had a larger so the screens larger, the quarty 0:22:29.119 --> 0:22:31.399 keyboards spread out there that these are the devices that 0:22:31.400 --> 0:22:35.240 look a little more squar ish or even rectangular, where 0:22:36.040 --> 0:22:38.560 you've got a lot more real estate for the screens. 0:22:39.000 --> 0:22:42.840 And in uh in two thousand one, Uh, that's where 0:22:42.840 --> 0:22:48.360 we start getting into some legal issues. So two thousand one, 0:22:48.440 --> 0:22:53.600 a group of investors file a lawsuit in a US 0:22:53.720 --> 0:22:59.119 federal court and they they accuse RIM of using of 0:22:59.200 --> 0:23:03.679 infringing patents held by a patent company called n TP. 0:23:04.880 --> 0:23:07.360 Now you may have heard our Yeah, if you heard 0:23:07.359 --> 0:23:11.000 of our our Patent Wars podcast, we talked about there 0:23:11.000 --> 0:23:15.399 were there are companies out there that really what they 0:23:15.440 --> 0:23:19.560 do is they acquire patents and then they either license 0:23:19.640 --> 0:23:22.520 those patents out to other companies that want to use 0:23:22.560 --> 0:23:25.920 the technology, or they sit on the patents and wait 0:23:25.960 --> 0:23:28.919 for someone to infringe on them and then sue the 0:23:29.000 --> 0:23:31.359 dickens out of them. Yeah, that's the problem with getting 0:23:31.359 --> 0:23:33.480 people to sit up and take notice of you. That 0:23:33.600 --> 0:23:36.159 also means that people sit up and take notice of you. 0:23:36.680 --> 0:23:40.800 NTP noticed Um also in two thousand just as a note, 0:23:41.400 --> 0:23:45.840 the company raised another nine fifty million dollars by offering 0:23:45.840 --> 0:23:50.120 more shares of stock they were gonna need um. But yeah, 0:23:50.119 --> 0:23:52.359 I mean, at this point, RIM is a well established 0:23:52.359 --> 0:23:57.080 company two thousand, which is what sixteen years or so 0:23:57.240 --> 0:24:03.640 after it's founding incorporate well formal uh incorporation corporation. So, um, yeah, 0:24:03.680 --> 0:24:05.520