Who owns rim

Already subscribed? Log in. Forgotten your password? There were two network outages in less than a year that left BlackBerry users temporarily without their services.

Some industry observers suggested the company could buckle under its own success. BlackBerry sales were soaring, even with the technical problems, with subscriber growth up 70 per cent to 36 million by the end of Despite the setbacks, the BlackBerry image appeared to emerge unscathed. Rumours swirled around the industry that trouble was afoot. In September , the co-CEOs showcased the new product for the public but waited another six months before unleashing it to stores.

By then it was too late, the tablet market had already been cornered by Apple and reviews of the PlayBook harshly criticized its lack of connectivity to popular BlackBerry functions like email and instant messenger. Within months the foundation of RIM started to crumble as it repeatedly missed its own revenue and earnings targets. In June , the company slashed 11 per cent of its workforce, or 2, jobs, to keep its cost in line.

A stark reminder of its fragility came in October when a worldwide four-day outage left BlackBerry users again without the use of the device they had come to rely on. The anger from its loyal users was heard loud and clear, and Lazaridis emerged from days of silence to apologize and tell users the company had let them down.

In December , the company reported that profits tumbled more than 70 per cent, affected by a big charge from sales discounts it was forced make on PlayBook tablets. RIM, once a symbol of Canadian success and innovation, had become awash in its own troubles. Sweeny recalls visiting a group of developers, who he considered BlackBerry fanatics, while doing research for his book in They were writing programs for Apple and starting to write for Android.

Numerous acquisitions were made by RIM throughout and to beef up its stable of technology, Long said. Balsillie later called it "RIM's sandbox. The pager had been around for over 30 years, in one form or another, but had always been a one-way device. With Mobitex deployed, there was now a way to change that. Two important elements helped make RIM successful in the s. The first was Lazaridis's relentless pursuit of innovation in wireless data communications.

Where other, larger companies had tried and failed or, more often, been blind to opportunities , he saw possibilities. He and his engineers then worked like mad to realize them.

The second was the hiring of Jim Balsillie in Before he arrived, the company had excelled at engineering, but its lack of experience navigating the high-stakes world of contracts and partnerships made it seem rudderless.

Balsillie brought discipline, and he knew his role: keeping the coffers full so Lazaridis had the freedom to innovate. Or, as he put it later, "My job is to raise money, Mike's is to spend it. By the time Balsillie came onboard, RIM was fully dedicated to wireless. It pushed forward with the two-way pager design even as Lazaridis had moved past it, to envisioning a wireless PDA.

He coined the term "personal digital assistants" to describe the small, handheld computers he believed would become commonplace. He offered the now-famous Knowledge Navigator video as Apple's vision for the future. By , this "very sophisticated PDA" would be connected to all the world's knowledge; it would respond to voice commands much like Siri. That was the dream, but Sculley had more concrete ideas in mind, too. Though he never mentioned it by name, he'd previewed the Newton platform that debuted soon after.

Appeals court upholds infringement ruling. Patent lawsuit denied hearing by US Supreme Court. BlackBerry has over 5 million subscribers. Apple debuts iPhone. BlackBerry subscribers pass 12 million.

RIM and Motorola embroiled in patent dispute. Subscriber base reaches 36 million. Subscriber base reaches 55 million. Subscribers reach 75 million. Worldwide service outage in October. Lazaridis was unimpressed. The whole point of a PDA, he believed, was constant connectivity. The Newton required syncing with another computer, making it more a peripheral than a stand-alone device.

To its credit, Apple saw the Newton as just a starting point; Sculley and his engineers conceived of it as a platform that would, in time, integrate wireless connectivity. At least not yet. Where skeptics of the day, including Intel chairman Andy Grove, saw technical impossibilities, Lazaridis saw an engineering challenge. If current electronics devoured too much power for the batteries of the day, well, he'd optimize them.

He believed he could make wireless work, and take it farther than anyone else. So his company went forward with the Mobitex products. In fall , it unveiled the RIM Inter ctive Pager, a pocket-sized clamshell device with a diminutive keyboard. It was glitchy and a little too heavy, not exactly a stunning success for the company, but it showed what could be done.

RIM went forward with its successor, the Lazaridis had recently hit on the idea of a thumb-typing keyboard, and the patented concept got worked into the That meant faster typing, but another advance proved even more important: always-on email.

With wireless connectivity and a superior keyboard, it was the first device that could replace a PC or laptop. And it could go three weeks on a single AA battery, quieting the power-problem skeptics.

But the legions of new fans were using it in the old way: like a pager. Given the name, this was understandable, but Lazaridis and his engineers knew it was more than that.

The ampersat in Inter ctive Pager only hinted at what they considered the device's killer feature, email. In a rare moment of going to the market, rather than waiting for it to come to him, Lazaridis realized the problem. They had the technology.

And they were used to talking to people who understood its intricacies, who worked with it every day: engineers and IT heads. But to really take off, their work had to go beyond that community. It needed to be understandable to consumers. In short, it needed marketing. Lexicon set out to establish a unique brand, one that would replace the blandly descriptive Inter ctive Pager with something more dynamic. Pagers were a dime a dozen; this was something different.

What was different about it? The keyboard. The keyboard made it more than a pager: it made it a true, professional messaging device. How to draw attention to the keyboard and everything it symbolized? No, not strawberry. Straw is a slow syllable, explained Lexicon's resident linguist. This is fast, zippy. Even the skeptical Lazaridis loved the name. It offered a handheld device with a suite of PDA functions calendar, address book, task list , and encrypted email that synchronized with your existing address.

It integrated with company networks, making it easy for IT departments to implement. And it was a hit from the very beginning. Balsillie knew he could hook anyone who tried the service, so he flooded Wall Street and Capitol Hill with BlackBerry devices.

That got the professionals, the lawyers and politicians and journalists. He went after early adopters, too, providing tech conferences with free units. Seen in the hands of the powerful and influential, it became not just an email reader, but a status symbol.

It signaled the user's importance, as did the viral-friendly tagline: Sent via BlackBerry. Soon everyone from Oprah to Madonna would be confessing their devotion to the BlackBerry.

BlackBerry became a massive revenue stream. Users numbered , in North America alone, and all of them were paying. The original BlackBerry relay server, located under a software developer's desk, soon became a warehouse-sized server farm. RIM was an analyst darling as Balsillie set about conquering as many markets as possible.

Rapid growth wasn't a fluke; it was a plan. There were few setbacks along the way. The carrier partners who sold its BlackBerrys to consumers often had trouble selling the high-end devices fast enough. Used to selling direct, RIM suddenly had less influence over its revenue stream. And there was the patent lawsuit. In , a Virginia patent holding company named NTP contacted RIM offering to license certain patents, including those related to a wireless email system.

NTP believed it owned the intellectual property underlying the BlackBerry products, and when Lazaridis's company didn't respond, it filed suit. RIM was no stranger to patent suits, as both a plaintiff and a defendant.

It considered NTP's filing a nuisance, another example of patent trolling by a non-practicing company. Ironically, NTP's legal action had begun partly because of RIM's own lawsuit against Glenayre Electronics over a patent on integrated electronic mailboxes. It responded with a press release declaring the complaint "unsubstantiated," and that "the only documentation accompanying the letter was a collection of seemingly random marketing materials printed from RIM's web site.

When the case went to trial — surprising for patent litigation — RIM argued that NTP's patents should be declared invalid due to prior art. The lawyers demonstrated a working wireless email technology from However, after studying the software, NTP's lawyers claimed it was actually from Feeling he'd been duped, the judge reprimanded RIM's attorneys.

Research In Motion vowed to appeal. The appeals process dragged on for five years, becoming a sinkhole of money and attention for RIM. The price to settle kept growing. Worse was the possibility of an injunction that would shut down BlackBerry service in the US. Throughout the legal wrangling, BlackBerry had only grown larger in the public mind.

It was synonymous with constant connectivity, and with the "CrackBerry" addiction. It was still the sign of the well-connected and ambitious. That earned the company powerful friends: during the NTP suit, the US Department of Justice voiced its opposition to a network shutdown. Meanwhile, the devices had changed slowly, incrementally, just as Lazaridis wanted. Balsillie called it "managed evolutions. This iterative process let the company respond to carrier demands for distinguishing features, even minor ones.

And a slow development process gave customers a feeling of familiarity: they weren't being bombarded with new and confusing features. The strategy was simple: keep the current users happy, and let the BlackBerry name do the rest. It had cachet a marketer couldn't even hope to buy. That approach earned RIM nine million subscribers by mid, adding another million every three months, and partnering with carriers in countries.

And the market for corporate email would only grow. The previous fall, RIM had begun to target consumers. But Lazaridis believed consumers would come to RIM; there was no need for a radical redesign. That philosophy led to the Pearl, the first BlackBerry with a camera and media player. Though many smartphones — from Motorola, Palm, and Samsung — had better cameras and media playback, RIM wanted to increase its appeal without alienating its base. The Pearl was a "prosumer" smartphone: BlackBerry's professional communications capabilities alongside basic multimedia.

It launched well, and RIM delivered a steady stream of new versions. As RIM made its first tentative appeals to consumers, a new competitor waited on the horizon, one that would redefine the smartphone industry. Other advanced features include the ability to visit specific web sites and conduct Internet searches. In addition, BlackBerry devices include other features common to personal digital assistants PDAs , including calendars and organizers.

In addition to wireless handheld devices, RIM also provides radio modems to original equipment manufacturers OEMs and software development kits for creating applications for BlackBerry Wireless Handhelds. Lazardis, the son of Greeks who immigrated to Canada from Turkey in , was 23 at the time. He had recently dropped out of the University of Waterloo, where he was studying electrical engineering. Backed by loans from friends and family, Lazardis and two friends started RIM.

The company's first contract came from General Motors of Canada Ltd. For several years the company survived by moving from contract to contract. RIM became interested in the long-term potential of digital wireless devices after it received a contract in from Rogers Cantel Mobile Communications, Inc. The contract required RIM to investigate the potential of newer wireless digital network systems being developed by Sweden's LM Ericsson. RIM was soon manufacturing tiny wireless radio modems.

By the mids these modems were being used by original equipment manufacturers OEMs in products ranging from computers to vending machines.

By RIM was developing software to support a complete wireless e-mail system. In January Ericsson introduced its first portable radio modem, which was designed for Hewlett-Packard Co.

RIM noted that by using radio packet technology instead of cellular networks, the network could determine the optimum time to send an e-mail message.

The system, which was still being developed, featured uninterrupted connectivity. Realizing that he was better at engineering than corporate finance, Lazardis hired James Balsillie in to handle the company's finances and business development. Balsillie was a chartered accountant with an M. In RIM released version 2. By manufacturers were beginning to focus on developing smart pagers that would utilize packet-based networks to provide wireless Internet access.

RIM initially announced it had two such pagers in development for commercial release in , one for the RAM Mobile Data wireless network and another that was compatible with Ardis Co. RIM's pocket-sized smart pages would let users exchange pages, e-mail, and Internet messages via either network. An innovative two-way messaging device, the Inter ctive pager featured a QWERTY keyboard and a small, text-only display screen that showed four lines of text. It was developed jointly with Intel Corporation and included a bit operating system along with built-in contact manager, scheduler, and forms-based messaging applications.

With service provided by Ardis Co. The handheld device could also store KB of data and had a variety of pre-programmed response messages, such as "I'll be late. Released commercially in , the Inter ctive pager quickly became RIM's best-known product. By early the company had signed a contract to supply IBM with Inter ctive pagers for use by its field service representatives across North America.

Other customers included Panasonic Corp. RIM completed its initial public offering during fiscal