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The Complete History of RIM
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."
In November 2002, Research in Motion (RIM) and Nokia announced a licensing arrangement allowing Nokia to offer its customers the ability to receive e-mail using RIM's BlackBerry software. The news perplexed industry watchers. For the three years before the deal, only RIM's devices could connect with the company's enterprise server, so that RIM owned both parts of the market for wireless e-mail: the devices and their software. RIM, in fact, seemed to own the very notion of that market.
The BlackBerry was the hardware equivalent of a killer app, the now overused term popularized in the 1980s to describe a piece of software so attractive to users that they feel they cannot be without it. Every new technology needs a killer app to establish its acceptance; for wireless e-mail, the BlackBerry filled that need. As businesses started to deploy the device to an increasingly mobile--and pressed--workforce, BlackBerry emerged as a critical tool for businesspeople.
Why, then, would RIM make its proprietary software available to others? Why would the company partner with a massive competitive threat such as Nokia? To many observers outside RIM, these decisions signaled a major shift in the company's business model. But to those inside RIM, they stemmed from a strategy the company had always followed.
RIM's case highlights a business problem that countless technology companies have had to deal with: when a company creates a revolutionary product whose software becomes critical to the establishment of a market, it has to figure out whether to keep its software all to itself or license it in an effort to make its technology the industry standard.
RIM has, throughout its history, followed two imperatives: make the best possible proprietary device for wireless e-mail and follow whatever course will increase the size of that market. Started in 1984 as a firm that built electronic devices for other companies, RIM signed its first deal with General Motors, to deliver a networked display system that scrolled words across LED signs in GM factories. The idea behind what eventually became the BlackBerry system dates to 1989, when RIM worked on an outsourced project for Ericsson. As RIM focused more on wireless data, it started manufacturing its own devices. Pager companies like Motorola had tried to combine e-mail with pagers, but none of the devices achieved much success. By the early 1990s, even PC-based e-mail had yet to take off, and many in the telecommunications industry saw wireless e-mail as a product that people did not really want or need.
RIM proved the viability of this market in stages. First, it received an order in 1997 from BellSouth for $50 million worth of wireless e-mail devices. BellSouth was offering a pioneering service intended to allow data transmission in applications like inventory tracking for rail transport. Its so-called Mobitex network used Ericsson technology, but it still needed a supplier to build a hardware component for consumer use. The opportunity gave Research in Motion a critical test network for its device.
The opportunity also convinced RIM that it ought to seek out a larger market for its new device, known within the company as PocketLink. In 1998, RIM began working with a California-based branding agency called Lexicon. One Lexicon strategist thought the gadget's keyboard resembled the seeds of a berry; the BlackBerry launched in January 1999. Instead of employing a stylus and handwriting recognition software, the device used a small, thumb-operated qwerty keyboard. But as impressive as its physical design was, the truly remarkable thing about the BlackBerry was that RIM provided everything needed to make it work: the device itself, the software that made it run, the servers that routed e-mail from the wired network, and the airtime that RIM leased from mobile-phone carriers. "As first mover in the market, we had an opportunity to build a brand around a new category," said Dave Werezak, vice president of RIM's Enterprise Business Unit.
By mid-1999
In the federal government, it's about the only approved PDA you can get that will let you sync your work email. Some models also double as cell phones.
You know you're sitting in a room of "very important bureaucrats" because you see them checking their email during meetings.
The ostensible reason they're so popular is during 9/11, cellphones didn't work, but Blackberries worked fine.
My father is a blogger.