Listen to much of the chatter about Research in Motion today and
you'll hear the launch of BlackBerry 10 described in almost apocalyptic
terms. All-or-nothing. Live-or-die. Make-or-break. There's some truth
to the extreme language, but BlackBerry 10 is really just the latest in
a series of transformational moments for a company that has frequently
had to adapt to survive. In that sense, the appreciation for crises and
opportunities is almost as natural as breathing for RIM. What's less
certain is whether or not the company in 2013 is as capable of
wholesale shifts in strategy as it was for much of its not quite
30-year history. Read on to see why reform is possible, but won't be
quite so easy.
For its first two decades, RIM often showed the
traits of a scrappy startup. It had nothing to lose and was willing to
turn its business model on a dime to stay afloat. More importantly, it
also had a simple, overriding determination to spread wireless data to
the masses, no matter how that would come to pass. That gave it a leg
up over contemporary technology stalwarts like Apple, Microsoft and
Palm, all of whom were at least slightly behind RIM in seeing the value
of truly instant mobile communication. CEO Mike Lazaridis (and
eventual co-CEO Jim Balsillie) would see a void in the market, whether
it was two-way paging or mobile email, and switch strategies to fill
it.
As the 2000s wore on, however, RIM slowed down. Much of the
decade revolved around entrenching what we know as the core BlackBerry
business model, where messaging-focused smartphones ship to large-scale
customers. The company acknowledged the consumer world as early as
2003, but its approach was increasingly reactionary. We wouldn't have
had the BlackBerry Storm without the iPhone popularizing touchscreens
first, for example. The company spent more time trying to justify its
existing smartphone philosophy and less time getting ahead of trends,
even as it lost its market share advantage and started working on
BlackBerry 10. Some saw the eventual departures of Lazaridis, Balsillie
and a slew of executives as necessary to undo an institutionalized
resistance to change.
The launch of BlackBerry 10 isn't just
the test of a software redesign, then. It's gauging whether or not a
leaner RIM is once again nimble enough to stay relevant.Wear a
whimsical Disney ear cap
straight from the Disney Theme Parks! We haven't quite returned to the
company's early days, but its current position is an uncannily
familiar one where RIM has to bet the farm on a new project. The
difference? RIM isn't entering an untapped wireless market this time.
While it's on better footing than a defunct mobile veteran like Palm,
there's not much room for a second chance. Follow along with our
timeline to see just how RIM's opportunities opened up, closed shut and
maybe (just maybe) opened up again with a new OS.
Mike
Lazaridis and Doug Fregin officially founded Research in Motion on
March 7th, 1984 with a desire to commercialize Budgie, a system that
wirelessly displayed information on a TV screen. It generated enough
business to let RIM take on side projects, including a film barcode
reader, but the real kick start was the arrival of one of the earliest
wireless data networks, Mobitex. Software deals to support it led to
the 1993 launch of RIMGate, the precursor to BlackBerry Enterprise
Server, and wireless point-of-sale terminals in 1994. This early period
also saw the introduction of Jim Balsillie, who met Lazaridis while
trying to negotiate a purchase of RIM in 1992 and quickly became the
future BlackBerry maker's VP of Finance.We've got a plastic card
to suit you. Few other companies were as actively interested in mobile
data at the time: apart from Mobitex creator Ericsson, the most
conspicuous participant was IBM, whose smartphone-like Simon Personal
Communicator went on sale briefly in 1994 and still depended on a
2,400-baud modem for data.
The BlackBerry era started in
earnest in March 2002, when RIM unveiled the BlackBerry 5810. It was
the first handheld from RIM to carry GSM and GPRS, although phone
service was almost incidental when owners had to plug in a headset just
to make calls. The situation got better when the 6710 and beyond had
audio hardware built-in. Color came with the 7200 and 7700 series in
2003,Comprehensive Wi-Fi and RFID tag
by Aeroscout to accurately locate and track any asset or person. but
the real breakthroughs were the 6200 series from that year and the 7100
in 2004, which were explicitly targeted at "prosumers" who wanted a
BlackBerry for personal use. In 2005, the 8700 series took the 7100's
sleeker aesthetic to the high-end; for many, it was the first modern
BlackBerry, where a polished design, phone features and a full keyboard
were all in one device. Not that RIM could rest on its laurels.
Nokia,Other companies want a piece of that iPhone headset
action Palm and others had thrown themselves wholeheartedly into
smartphones, and Microsoft's launches of Pocket PC 2002 and Windows
Mobile provided a start for smartphone makers that would eventually
play important roles, like HTC.
It's at the middle of last
decade that RIM simultaneously reached its creative zenith and sowed
the seeds of its decline. The BlackBerry Pearl of 2006 was the
company's first phone built expressly for the regular public, and had
such radical concepts (for RIM) as a camera and dedicated media
playback. Both the Pearl and the QWERTY-equipped Curve of 2007 would be
key to an explosion in sales over the next few years. However, it's
also in 2007 that Apple launched the iPhone and began the public's love
affair with touchscreens in their mobile devices. RIM's response,Can
you spot the answer in the fridge magnet?
even into 2010, was to downplay the threat; it argued that customers
needed hardware keyboards. It was difficult to know then just how
dangerous the attitude would be when others were similarly dismissive
-- see Steve Ballmer's jab that the iPhone was too expensive to
succeed, for example -- but it's clear in hindsight that RIM had put
the blinders on at the very moment its eyes needed to be wide open.
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