A Brief History Of The BlackBerry
BlackBerrys are cult devices, inspiring a kind of slavish devotion perhaps matched only by Apple
products. But while Apple’s corporate history is familiar to many, no one has written a comprehensive corporate history of Research In Motion , the company behind the iconic BlackBerry.
Canadian historian and author Alastair Sweeny is set to release the first such book in September. Called BlackBerry Planet: The Story of Research in Motion and the Little Device that Took the World by Storm , it tracks the evolution of the BlackBerry from RIM co-founder Mike Lazaridis’ 1960s childhood to present day. Forbes reached Sweeny at his Ottawa home to discuss Lazaridis’ similarity to Steve Jobs, what RIM thinks of his book and why future BlackBerrys may morph into telepathic gadgets he calls “telebrain.”
Forbes: What inspired you to write a book about RIM, and why do you think no one has written one before?
Alastair Sweeny: Corporate history is my passion. I know people at RIM and people who do business with RIM who I knew would be helpful in terms of background. RIM is a great Canadian success story, so as a Canadian there’s a nice element there.
I also saw a business opportunity. This year is the 10th anniversary of the first true BlackBerry device. I figured someone would write about RIM sooner or later and it might as well be me. I was amazed no one had done a book yet when Apple and Microsoft have been done to death. It may be the remoteness of RIM, being up in Waterloo, away from Silicon Valley and all its tech reporters.
You mention you spoke to some people at RIM. How much access did the company give you?
It was a hard book to research. RIM was not too friendly. I interviewed some executives, like [former RIM director] Gary Mousseau and corresponded with the big guys [co-CEOs Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie] on e-mail, mostly on background.
I tried to chase some other people down and was unable to. Then I put Chapter 1 in its entirety on a
public wiki site , which attracted the attention of several early engineers from RIM and RIM partners like Ericsson, BellSouth and [Canadian operator] Rogers. People came out of the woodwork in May and June, so we delayed the book for a month and added in more information. They were very forthcoming and would say things like, “No, you haven’t quite got it here.” I also have a friend with a BlackBerry collection that goes way back, who gave me some good insight on the devices.
It’s more fun to talk about how RIM got to this point than its current status as a mature corporation, so I concentrated on the peripheral and early guys. There’s also a lot of stuff out there that hadn’t been pulled together. It was like putting together a big jigsaw puzzle.
In the book, Lazaridis, who founded RIM at age 23, is likened to a modern Leonardo da Vinci. What’s your take?
I consider him a visionary who is smart enough to take his vision to market. [Apple CEO] Steve Jobs is like that. In the book, I talk about young Lazaridis being a Star Trek fanatic, tinkering as a student, trying to make force fields. He always had this straight-ahead vision and childlike sense of wonder. I think the Star Trek Communicator is the inspiration for all the machines he builds.
The similarities end at a certain point. Steve Jobs supposedly gets involved in everything. He can drive people crazy, but you see the difference in Apple’s quality of design. Early on, Lazaridis divided engineering from marketing. It insulated the engineers but also meant RIM was using clunky fonts until a few years ago. With RIM, form is function.
With Apple, maybe it’s the other way around.
RIM has had the same co-CEOs since 1992. What accounts for that longevity?
They’re a good tag team. Balsillie’s job is to give feedback to the engineers. He believed in RIM from the beginning; he even mortgaged his house to buy RIM shares. He can execute, and that’s been a large part of RIM’s success. All of a sudden, he arrives and RIM is playing hardball.
You dedicate an entire chapter to patent issues. How central were patents to RIM’s evolution?
The battle with NTP was a big grow-up experience for RIM. The settlement was the largest technology patent settlement in U.S. history, but I argue it was worth every penny. It was great publicity and by the time the trial was over, RIM’s business had quintupled or more, and $650 million was something they shrugged off. Plus, the settlement ensured that NTP had a whole bunch of cash to go after RIM’s competitors like Palm. Those battles are behind RIM now. Lazaridis now says, when anyone has a good idea, RIM patents it right away.
What do you see as the other defining events in RIM’s 20-plus years as a company?
Like any high-tech company, there are a lot of stories about subsisting on Coke and pizza, writing code for 36 hours straight. One of Lazaridis’ teachers told him the real technology breakthrough would be in mobile texting. After college, Lazaridis bounced from one contract to another, assembled a team and discovered a way to do two-way paging. When operators brought in Internet mail, RIM was ready. They had the market to themselves for a few years before people started to catch up.
Thank you for reading visit again
BlackBerrys are cult devices, inspiring a kind of slavish devotion perhaps matched only by Apple
products. But while Apple’s corporate history is familiar to many, no one has written a comprehensive corporate history of Research In Motion , the company behind the iconic BlackBerry.
Canadian historian and author Alastair Sweeny is set to release the first such book in September. Called BlackBerry Planet: The Story of Research in Motion and the Little Device that Took the World by Storm , it tracks the evolution of the BlackBerry from RIM co-founder Mike Lazaridis’ 1960s childhood to present day. Forbes reached Sweeny at his Ottawa home to discuss Lazaridis’ similarity to Steve Jobs, what RIM thinks of his book and why future BlackBerrys may morph into telepathic gadgets he calls “telebrain.”
Forbes: What inspired you to write a book about RIM, and why do you think no one has written one before?
Alastair Sweeny: Corporate history is my passion. I know people at RIM and people who do business with RIM who I knew would be helpful in terms of background. RIM is a great Canadian success story, so as a Canadian there’s a nice element there.
I also saw a business opportunity. This year is the 10th anniversary of the first true BlackBerry device. I figured someone would write about RIM sooner or later and it might as well be me. I was amazed no one had done a book yet when Apple and Microsoft have been done to death. It may be the remoteness of RIM, being up in Waterloo, away from Silicon Valley and all its tech reporters.
You mention you spoke to some people at RIM. How much access did the company give you?
It was a hard book to research. RIM was not too friendly. I interviewed some executives, like [former RIM director] Gary Mousseau and corresponded with the big guys [co-CEOs Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie] on e-mail, mostly on background.
I tried to chase some other people down and was unable to. Then I put Chapter 1 in its entirety on a
public wiki site , which attracted the attention of several early engineers from RIM and RIM partners like Ericsson, BellSouth and [Canadian operator] Rogers. People came out of the woodwork in May and June, so we delayed the book for a month and added in more information. They were very forthcoming and would say things like, “No, you haven’t quite got it here.” I also have a friend with a BlackBerry collection that goes way back, who gave me some good insight on the devices.
It’s more fun to talk about how RIM got to this point than its current status as a mature corporation, so I concentrated on the peripheral and early guys. There’s also a lot of stuff out there that hadn’t been pulled together. It was like putting together a big jigsaw puzzle.
In the book, Lazaridis, who founded RIM at age 23, is likened to a modern Leonardo da Vinci. What’s your take?
I consider him a visionary who is smart enough to take his vision to market. [Apple CEO] Steve Jobs is like that. In the book, I talk about young Lazaridis being a Star Trek fanatic, tinkering as a student, trying to make force fields. He always had this straight-ahead vision and childlike sense of wonder. I think the Star Trek Communicator is the inspiration for all the machines he builds.
The similarities end at a certain point. Steve Jobs supposedly gets involved in everything. He can drive people crazy, but you see the difference in Apple’s quality of design. Early on, Lazaridis divided engineering from marketing. It insulated the engineers but also meant RIM was using clunky fonts until a few years ago. With RIM, form is function.
With Apple, maybe it’s the other way around.
RIM has had the same co-CEOs since 1992. What accounts for that longevity?
They’re a good tag team. Balsillie’s job is to give feedback to the engineers. He believed in RIM from the beginning; he even mortgaged his house to buy RIM shares. He can execute, and that’s been a large part of RIM’s success. All of a sudden, he arrives and RIM is playing hardball.
You dedicate an entire chapter to patent issues. How central were patents to RIM’s evolution?
The battle with NTP was a big grow-up experience for RIM. The settlement was the largest technology patent settlement in U.S. history, but I argue it was worth every penny. It was great publicity and by the time the trial was over, RIM’s business had quintupled or more, and $650 million was something they shrugged off. Plus, the settlement ensured that NTP had a whole bunch of cash to go after RIM’s competitors like Palm. Those battles are behind RIM now. Lazaridis now says, when anyone has a good idea, RIM patents it right away.
What do you see as the other defining events in RIM’s 20-plus years as a company?
Like any high-tech company, there are a lot of stories about subsisting on Coke and pizza, writing code for 36 hours straight. One of Lazaridis’ teachers told him the real technology breakthrough would be in mobile texting. After college, Lazaridis bounced from one contract to another, assembled a team and discovered a way to do two-way paging. When operators brought in Internet mail, RIM was ready. They had the market to themselves for a few years before people started to catch up.
Thank you for reading visit again
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