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The Complete History of RIM

Posted by timothy on from the first-there-were-the-dinosaurs dept.

museumpeace writes "I enjoyed reading Alex Frankel's thorough Tech. Review article on the luck, persistence and shrewdness that took RIM's proprietary mobile e-mail technology from presumed small niche product to the must-have blackberry that so many use today. Although the technology at the heart of the product was developed in 1989, it took years of further development, the lucky break of GPRS supplanting Mobitex, and the business smarts to jump on their first-mover advantage and the daring to partner with giant Nokia who could have swallowed RIM. Its a great example of how to succeed by carefully making a defacto standard out of a good proprietary technology."

6 of 94 comments (clear)

  1. You'd think by BillsPetMonkey · · Score: 4, Funny

    They could find a better name for it.

    All this talk of mobile RIMming and Nokia swallowing RIM just sounds a bit icky.

    --
    "It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
    1. Re:You'd think by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      Here's a story that fits in perfectly here.

      Before RIM really hit the big time, my company had a chance encounter with them, and ended up getting a job to do some e-commerce programming for them. The project involved about two months of them trying to figure out just what they wanted to do, and me trying to keep up with the constant scope changes. After all that hassle, I handed over a working script to them, which they...promptly deployed into production, right?

      Heh, I wish. As far as I know, they ended up not even using it. Still paid us for the work, but didn't use even one line of it, at least to our knowledge. In 9 years at my position, I can't recall a more bizarre chain of events.

      To this day, that project is known simply as "the RIM job". I left that job last week, but the legacy remains.

    2. Re:You'd think by epiphani · · Score: 1, Funny

      I applied for a RIM job about a year ago. I had a friend who already had a RIM job, so that gave me a leg up on the competition. The interview for my RIM job was a little disappointing. I didnt realize I had to talk to so many people just to get a RIM job. And to top it all off, they asked me some really easy questions. I think I had a good shot at getting a RIM job, but I ended up going elsewhere. I'll probably apply for a RIM job again in a year or two, because eventually I want one. I just have to get some other experience first. Cant really get a RIM job without having experienced some other things first, eh..

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  2. Not to mention... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    The explosion of RIM jobs and how it lead to an increase of black berries...

  3. So are RIM good guys? by Salk · · Score: 2, Funny

    What about Nokia?

    I know M$ is bad and GNU/Linux good beyond that I get a cluster headache.

  4. Good job by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    Looks like RIM did a good JOB.