BlackBerry

[Spokes]

Waterloo Region’s BlackBerry decade

December 31, 2009

Let the history books record and future generations duly note that the past 10 years in Waterloo Region have been the BlackBerry decade.

To say this is, of course to acknowledge and celebrate the enormous impact that the hand-held electronic communications marvel made by Waterloo’s Research In Motion has had on the world as well as this region. But if you also recognize the BlackBerry as the most famous symbol of Waterloo Region’s flourishing high-tech sector, you will see it stands for even more than RIM’s greatest success story. It stands for the region’s future as a key player in the new knowledge-based, technology-based economy that is emerging in Canada and rapidly transforming it.

Not so many years ago, few people had heard of RIM or knew that a BlackBerry wasn’t an edible fruit. Indeed, the first BlackBerry device was introduced to the world just 10 years ago in 1999 as a two-way pager. Within a few years, the BlackBerry had evolved into a smartphone that served as a mobile phone, handled email, did text messaging, internet faxing, Web browsing and more. Today, it is known around the world and is responsible for Waterloo Region being a recognizable name in the farthest reaches of the planet. It has made us a contender in a globalized world economy

But remember, too, what Waterloo Region was like 10 years ago. Even then, much of the region’s traditional manufacturing base had collapsed. The Seagram distillery, the Labatt brewery, the massive Uniroyal tire plant on Strange Street in Kitchener and many other industries were casualties of the devastating recession of the early 1990s. But the industrial decline continued in the first decade of the 21st century when marquee businesses such as Kaufman Footwear, BF Goodrich, MTD and Kitchener Frame went out of business.

The result of all this could have been disastrous for Waterloo Region’s economy and, indeed, the standard of living enjoyed by its citizens. But it wasn’t, in large part because of RIM, the BlackBerry and the high-tech sector in general. They saved us from turning into a southern Ontario rust belt.

Today, 575 technology companies make their home in this region. That’s a dramatic increase from the 310 local high-tech firms in 2004. But it’s absolutely incredible growth when you remember than in 1997, there were just 50 such companies in Waterloo Region.

Together, these 575 companies employ 30,000 people locally and produce $13 billion in annual revenues. The sales for RIM alone in the last fiscal year hit $11.07 billion US. Roughly 8,000 local people work for RIM each day in one of the 25 buildings it has in Waterloo Region. But there are other names to keep in mind when talking about the local high-tech sector, names such as Open Text, ATS, Com Dev, Descartes, Sandvine, Sybase, Desire2Learn, Dalsa, MKS, RDM, Turbosonic and Christie Digital.

The influence of this sector in Waterloo Region goes beyond sales, revenues, paycheques and cash flows. The incredible philanthropy of RIM co-chief executive Mike Lazaridis has given us the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics and helped create the Institute for Quantum Physics, both in Waterloo. Likewise, the vision and generosity of RIM co-chief executive Jim Balsillie created the Centre for International Governance Innovation in Waterloo, a centre dedicated to reaching a better understanding of global politics and international issues. He also backed the soon-to-open Balsillie School of International Affairs. Donations from other RIM employees were crucial in opening the Waterloo Region Children’s Museum in downtown Kitchener.

There continues to be a great symbiotic relationship between the University of Waterloo and the local high-tech sector. Wilfrid Laurier University, the University of Guelph and Conestoga College are also embedded in the foundation of the region’s knowledge-based economy. The past decade saw considerable expansion of these universities, too: University of Waterloo opened its new School of Architecture in Cambridge; Laurier opened a social work campus in Kitchener and the University of Waterloo opened a School of Pharmacy nearby. A medical school will open next door to it in 2010.

The past decade brought many other changes to the region. The downtown cores in Waterloo, Kitchener and Cambridge all experienced some revitalization. Health care became better with improvements to local hospitals and the opening of cancer and cardiac centres in Kitchener. People from across Canada and around the world continued to pour into the region, making it more vital, exciting and busy, as well as putting pressure on the community’s infrastructure and its natural environment. All these changes bring challenges, as well as good things.

But there should be no doubt that we will be more capable of meeting those challenges because, even after a harsh, global recession, the fundamentals of Waterloo Region’s economy remain sound. And if we are looking for one word, one object to epitomize the soundness of that local economy, we would pick the BlackBerry. In an era of uncertainty and persistent anxieties, it is one reason the citizens of Waterloo Region should enter the new decade with optimism.

http://news.therecord.com/article/649579


RIM opening North Carolina office

January 06, 2010
The Associated Press

RALEIGH, N.C. — Research In Motion plans to open a North Carolina research-and-development hub.

The News & Observer of Raleigh reported Wednesday that the Waterloo-based company confirmed plans to open the office in the Raleigh’s Research Triangle Park area.

Company spokesperson Jamie Ernst said the new office is in the planning stages. Details on the location, opening date or number of people to be hired aren’t yet available.

The company held a two-day job fair in the Raleigh area last month and has already started hiring some of the thousands of local high-tech workers laid off in the past two years.

Research In Motion also has U.S. offices in Texas, California, Florida and Illinois.

http://news.therecord.com/article/650346

Research In Motion CEO Jim Balsillie named Business Newsmaker of the Year
January 7, 2010 | David Friend | THE CANADIAN PRESS | Link

TORONTO - Jim Balsillie may have failed to land the Phoenix Coyotes last year, but his tenacious pursuit of the team gained the Waterloo, Ont., billionaire businessman both notoriety and the admiration of many a Canadian eager to see another professional hockey franchise land in Canada.

Balsillie's relentless battle with U.S. courts and the National Hockey League took on the air of a struggle for nothing less than national pride, painting him as a Canadian hero pushing to repatriate a piece of the national game from American soil.

Off the ice, the co-CEO of Canada's most successful technology company, Research In Motion (TSX:RIM), proved that he could recover from repeated stumbles, both in his pursuit of a hockey team and at the highly successful BlackBerry maker.

Balsillie's struggles have earned him the title of Canada's 2009 Business Newsmaker of the Year, as chosen in an annual survey of editors and broadcasters by The Canadian Press.

He captured 44 of 122 votes cast in the business newsmaker survey, nearly double the votes logged for the Canadian consumer, at second place with 24, and Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney, with 20.

RIM, one of this country's most valuable corporations, had ups and downs during the year. The company added 15 million new subscribers as it grew into the consumer smartphone market and expanded into China. But at the same time, it suffered two network crashes and came under intensifying competition from rivals such as Apple Inc., Google and Palm.

While headlines in 2009 were gloomy with job losses and a crumbling economy, the executive became a poster boy for resilience as he faced off against his opponents in the highest ranks of the NHL, and stuck to his guns even as his dream to bring the Coyotes to Hamilton drifted away.

It was Balsillie's third failed attempt to land an NHL team. Earlier, he had tried to buy the Pittsburgh Penguins from former player Mario Lemieux and his partners, and the Nashville Predators franchise.

Balsillie, who had a net worth of about $2.7 billion in 2009, is a highly driven person in business as well as in his personal life. The business school graduate and Harvard University MBA is a noted athlete and passionate fitness advocate who plays hockey and golf competitively and regularly enters triathlons.

"He tends to go for everything in what he does," said Jim Estill, a longtime board member at RIM.

"He doesn't like to lose, and will not lose, basically."

As far as the NHL is concerned, the goose is cooked for the 48-year-old executive and his bid for a hockey team, but this isn't the first time Balsillie has been down, and those who know him say that he shouldn't be considered out of the game.

"He's just like a punching bag that comes right back when he gets hit, and whacks you right in the stomach," said friend and fellow entrepreneur Ron Foxcroft in an interview last summer, shortly after Balsillie lost the Coyote's bid.

"These little obstacles are just like waving a red flag in front of a bull. It just makes him more determined and more motivated."

Balsillie also took a few punches in the boardroom last year, facing penalties from the Ontario Securities Commission in February as part of a stock option backdating settlement with other RIM executives worth about $77 million in fines and restitution.

The Waterloo, Ont.-based company was also slammed by customers and industry analysts after its networks crashed twice in less than a week near the end of the year, leaving BlackBerry addicts stranded without email or Internet for hours.

Some said the timing couldn't have been worse, because RIM faces heightened competition this year from other smart phone devices like the iPhone and Google Wave.

Not all of the news was bad, however, as RIM managed to grow BlackBerry subscribers by 70 per cent to 36 million at the end of the third quarter last year, compared to a year earlier. The company's quarterly results also outshone the skepticism of many analysts who believed the company's growth would stall in the economic downturn.

Throughout it all, Balsillie has brushed himself off and trudged ahead. He hasn't publicly spoken about his NHL bid since earlier this year and declined interview requests.

Last year wasn't the first time Balsillie's hockey pursuit had been called offside: it followed well-publicized and unsuccessful bids to buy both the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Nashville Predators. In 2009, he returned to the NHL with a force, offering as much as US$242.5 million for the Coyotes, and pushing his bid with a level of passion and determination that hadn't been seen before.

His proposal included massive renovations to Hamilton's Copps Coliseum, the potential home of the hockey team, and a website that encouraged Canadians to ramp up their support for another local hockey team. He also used his clout to convince some corporate sponsors to sign on before the specifics were even etched out.

The approach seemed to irk high-ranking officials at the NHL, who had already told him they weren't interested in moving the Phoenix team to Canada. NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly chastised Balsillie's attempt to rally the hockey fans in Canada, and put pressure on the NHL to accept his bid.

"Mr. Balsillie is acting, again, in total disregard of any rules, or any structure," Daly said last summer.

Ruffling the feathers of the NHL executives appeared to hinder Balsillie's bid, and some suggest that he should've stuck to the traits which helped make him a billionaire in business.

"When you look at Jim's style in the smart phone world, he is in fact a paragon of partnering," said Duncan Stewart, director of research and analysis at DSam Consulting.

"He works very closely with the (mobile phone) carriers, and he is a highly skilled diplomat. So the whole thing with the NHL is extremely uncharacteristic."

Hamilton mayor Fred Eisenberger, who was in touch with Balsillie as he duked it out with the heads of the NHL, suggested that a less pushy tactic might yield better success in the future.

"The previous attempts have all been very aggressive, not necessarily working with the board of governors and the NHL," Eisenberger said.

"I think he may have to rethink his engagement strategy in that process if he wants to acquire a team."

While Balsillie hasn't said whether he plans to take another run at an NHL team, he has always made it clear that this was part of a childhood dream, which, in Balsillie-speak, means he won't surrender.

"There's a certain grace about him that he didn't whine about it," said Alastair Sweeny, author of "BlackBerry Planet."

"He'll be back and I think he'll get his NHL team sooner or later."

His persistence with the hockey bid has caused concern among some analysts who say Balsillie could become distracted from the daily activities of growing RIM.

"He keeps the two separate," said Estill, who has been a board member at RIM since before it became a public company in 1998.

However, he noted that Balsillie is "passionate about everything he does, so obviously things bubble to the surface whatever he's doing."

Despite criticism, RIM's quarterly performance has still managed to outshine market expectations. The company is in the midst of rolling out its products in China, a country that hasn't yet bought into the smartphone movement like many parts of the world.

"Over and over we have heard the wheels are about to fall off the bus and they're going to be obliterated by somebody else... but the opposite has occurred," Stewart said.

"There is an element of the populist, if you will, in Jim. He actually finds value in going out and trying to convince other people."

[UrbanWaterloo]

Editor's letter: Why Canada needs RIM to win
Rather than tripping over ourselves to predict its downfall, we should all be collectively rooting for RIM's success.
From Canadian Business magazine, February 15, 2010
By Steve Maich
http://www.canadianbusiness.com/afte...13_10001_10001

For about 10 years now, Canada’s business experts have been waiting for Research In Motion to fail. At the start of the decade, the consensus on Bay Street held that RIM was insane to be trying to build and market its own handset, going head-to-head against Goliath competitors like Nokia, Motorola and Palm. Talk to most analysts and they were dead certain that Waterloo’s nifty little startup, with its cool e-mail pagers, would get crushed by bigger, smarter competition from abroad. The only reasonable strategy would be to find a strong partner and license their e-mail software in return for royalties. That would have been a nice, safe little strategy, and soon enough one of those big phone makers would have swallowed RIM whole. But Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis weren’t interested.

Once RIM proved that the BlackBerry was a wildly popular revolutionary device, more than capable of trumping anything Palm could come up with, the concerns about patents arose. “Look! RIM doesn’t even own their own technology! They’re doomed!” Well the patent wars dragged on, but in retrospect, they were little more than a temporary (though expensive) distraction. Now, of course, the experts are collectively preoccupied with increasing competition. The iPhone is slick, fun, and its e-mail capability is very nearly as good as BlackBerry’s. The Palm Pre is an impressive smartphone in its own right, and Google’s Nexus One looks like a formidable new player. All this has many claiming, once again, that RIM’s best days are over.

Sometimes it seems we Canadians just can’t bring ourselves to believe that we have a world-class technology champion in our midst. Rather than tripping over ourselves to predict its downfall, we should all be collectively rooting for RIM’s success.

If Canada is going to develop the dynamic high-tech industry we so desperately want, we’ll need champions capable of winning on a global scale. Right now, Canada has precisely one company that fits the bill: RIM.

Consider a few facts: When we ranked the 100 biggest technology companies in Canada last year, RIM stood atop the list with a market value of $45.7 billion. No. 2 was CGI Group, less than 1/14th RIM’s size. In fact, the market value of companies two through 100 combined added up to less than half RIM’s value. Now, there are certainly some very exciting small Canadian tech firms on that list, but not one of them can hold a candle to RIM’s reach and influence.

Between 2001 and 2008 (a period in which employment in Canada’s telecom and computer industries was essentially flat), RIM increased its labour force tenfold, from about 1,200 to 12,000. And then there is RIM’s impact on tech research in Canada. In 2008, the company spent roughly $383.6 million in the lab — making it the country’s sixth-biggest private R&D spender. And while most of the other big spenders were reining in budgets, RIM increased its spending by 51% in one year.

Then, of course, there’s the philanthropy. RIM’s top three executives donated $170 million to help establish the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, which is fast becoming a global powerhouse in the exploration of new scientific ideas. It’s exactly the kind of spinoff benefit that helps foster a culture of innovation that will pay real dividends for the future health of Canada’s knowledge economy.

When Nortel imploded last year, we lost this country’s biggest R&D spender, and a hugely important tech titan. We can’t afford to lose another.

I have a Mac laptop and an iPod, and I love them. I also have a BlackBerry, and I can’t imagine working without it. Within a year, I’ll be ready to replace my handset. When I do, I will be getting another BlackBerry because, as a Canadian, I have a lot riding on the company’s success. Let’s face it, we all do.

[UrbanWaterloo]

New book chronicles rise of RIM
John Spears, Business Reporter
Published On Wed Mar 3 2010
http://www.thestar.com/business/comp...es-rise-of-rim


Research in Motion co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis (left) and Jim Balsillie.

In the summer of 1997, Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie handed out what they promised would be the Next Big Thing in business communications technology to a group of BellSouth executives in Atlanta.

Except, what they handed around the boardroom didn't actually do anything. All they had to show was a couple of carved wooden models of their Inter@active Pager 950 – a forerunner of the BlackBerry – with glued-on paper keyboards.

It didn't matter. The pitch succeeded, and BellSouth ordered $70 million worth of the devices, also known as the Leapfrog.

That's one of the vignettes that veteran business writer Rod McQueen relates in BlackBerry (Key Porter Books, $32.95), his new book on Research In Motion.

McQueen said in an interview that he started pursuing Lazaridis and Balsillie in 2005 for access, so he could write the book. When they agreed, he bought a BlackBerry and shares in RIM.

McQueen, a past winner of the National Business Book Award, showed Balsillie and Lazaridis a manuscript before publication, but says he retained editorial control. They asked for only a few corrections of technical details.

The Star sat down with McQueen to find out what what he learned about Canada's most celebrated tech company.

Q: Why did you write about RIM?

A: Because it is such a success story. We've had in 143 years of Canadian history, and you can count on one hand the number of Canadian-based manufacturers that have gone global: Massey-Ferguson, Bata, Bombardier, Magna, Nortel. And that's it. I wanted to find out how it all happened, and see whether or not others could do the same.

Q: Is RIM the exception that proves the rule Canadians aren't good at creating world-beating companies?

A: I hope not. It's interesting how Mike Lazaridis looks at Canada.

Mike sees Canada as a country of natural resources. When most people think of that they think of oil and nickel and gold and uranium, He sees people as a natural resource. That's why he built the company next door to the University of Waterloo. When he first put up buildings, he put up signs at the back. He didn't care if they were visible from the street. He wanted students on the campus to know he was there. He said he built the refinery next to the gold mine.

Q: Were there any failures at RIM?

A: They had this thing called Budgie (in 1984). It was like a little television screen hooked up to some innards from Radio Shack and a keyboard. You could enter four lines (of text) on a screen, and he had this notion that retailers would buy it and it would say: 40 per cent off all shirts. They ordered 100 of them for $10,000, and sold a third of them.

Q: As you worked on the book what surprised you about RIM?

A: I guess I was surprised by how the two of them are able to manage this co-CEO relationship. Nobody else has successfully carried this off for so long – 17 years.

Balsillie says: I raise the money and Mike spends it. Obviously there's more to it than that. But what it allows them to do is have power in specific areas, without the other guy second-guessing him.

These guys have the visions, the capacity, the relationship with their organization, to make huge changes in a short period of time.

Q: Has the BlackBerry changed lives for the worse, by tying people permanently to the workplace?

A: A survey just done in Britain showed BlackBerry adds 10 days to your working week, because you're working longer, you're working on the weekends. Well, if you do the math, 10 days a year works out to about 20 minutes a working day. It seems to me the BlackBerry is going to save more time than that.

Q: Do Lazaridis and Balsillie ever put away their BlackBerrys?

A: Mike and Jim have rules. Balsillie's BlackBerry goes on a table by the door. And every evening at Mike's house, he and his wife and their two kids sit and they read or they talk, but there's no BlackBerrys for those few hours.

Q: Did you spot any weaknesses at RIM?

A: If I had identified a weakness, I would have put it in the book. There was nothing I saw that in any way could be called a corporate weakness.

Q: Could a new device emerge that suddenly overtakes the BlackBerry?

A: They've passed by Palm and Motorola, who used to be bigger then RIM. Right now BlackBerry has the biggest market share of smartphones in North America.

Plain vanilla cellphones are the most popular consumer electronic device every produced. Over the next five to seven years as people convert to smartphones, there's a huge market for this business. I imagine both (iPhone and BlackBerry) will do well. There's billions of potential buyers.

From a carrier standpoint, iPhone takes up a huge amount of space in the pipe, in bandwidth. It takes 20 BlackBerrys to take up the same space as one iPhone in terms of taking up space in the Internet. Things are going to slow down on the Internet, or everybody assumes they will. If everybody bought a BlackBerry instead of a iPhone, it would take longer to slow down.

[urbandreamer]

The iphone kicks blackberry's arse hard! The rest of the world seems to agree.

[RangersFan]

The iphone kicks blackberry's arse hard! The rest of the world seems to agree.

Thats funny

[Spokes]

The iphone kicks blackberry's arse hard! The rest of the world seems to agree.

hahah that is quite funny. But I won't bother providing proof that the Blackberry is better. Sales show it

[Urbanomicon]

The iphone kicks blackberry's arse hard! The rest of the world seems to agree.

They are geared for two completely different markets. The Blackberry is designed primarily for communication and interaction in a business setting. It is designed to deal with email, IM and office-related applications as an extension of your office computer. The iPhone is geared towards consumers (hence the "iPhone Apps" that cover a wide range of consumer interests, games, messenger programs, facebook, etc.) It is more like a Nintendo DS with a built in phone and internet connection.

[UrbanWaterloo]

The book on Blackberry: From atop the Bagel Bin to a global brand
By Chuck Howitt, Record staff - March 6, 2010
http://news.therecord.com/Business/article/679238


Rod McQueen with his book, BlackBerry.

WATERLOO — In the summer of 1985, the business office for Research In Motion was a 500-square foot room above the Bagel Bin on Erb Street East in Waterloo.

For work space, co-founders Mike Lazaridis and Doug Fregin used battered desks scrounged from the basement apartment they shared on Churchill Street and old doors that they laid across metal trestles. The pair were so poor they walked or biked to work, lived on spaghetti and stored soft drinks in the air-conditioning duct to keep them cool.

Lazaridis and Fregin were hard at work on a contract they had signed to provide electronic signs to the General Motors truck plant in Scarborough.

Research In Motion had secured this deal through a company called Computer Advertising Signs of Toronto, which had heard of an innovative product designed by Lazaridis called the Budgie that allowed users to broadcast messages on electronic signs using a computer program.

Home Hardware had ordered a few of the Budgies, but the majority remained stacked in boxes in Research In Motion’s tiny office, awaiting buyers who were slow to materialize.

For a young company such as RIM, the contract with General Motors was a huge one, worth $600,000. It caused the folks at Computer Advertising Signs to lose their heads. They redesigned their offices, ordered new furniture, hired a receptionist and started burning through cash that had nothing to do with the signs.

Meanwhile, Lazaridis and Fregin could only dream of eating the bagels they smelled as the aroma wafted up from downstairs.

Computer Advertising Signs went bankrupt before the contract was even completed. What about Research In Motion? Not only did it supply the Budgies to GM, it has never looked back, and today it is what author Rod McQueen calls one of the most amazing success stories in Canadian manufacturing history.

RIM has taken a place alongside Massey-Harris in the 19th century, and Bata, Bombardier, Magna and briefly Nortel Networks in the 20th, as the only Canadian manufacturing firms that have achieved success as a global brand, McQueen says in his new book BlackBerry, named after RIM’s flagship smartphone product.

A veteran business writer who has authored 12 books on companies such as Confederation Life, the Eatons and Manulife, McQueen said in an interview he was drawn to do a book on RIM because of the company’s astonishing success.

But gaining access to co-chief executives Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie did not come easily. Like a cagey predator stalking his prey, McQueen started doing background interviews in 2005. Among his early sources were key executives at microchip manufacturer Intel in Arizona and telecom carrier BellSouth in Atlanta, two pivotal partners in RIM’s early success.

McQueen did not approach Lazaridis and Balsillie until the spring of 2006, six months after he started working on the book. They were in Toronto to accept an award as CEOs of the year from the Canadian Club. McQueen approached Lazaridis and told him of his book idea and some of the people he had already interviewed.

Lazaridis was initially taken aback. “We don’t do very much of that,” McQueen recalls him saying.

Though they did not agree immediately, Lazaridis and Balsillie did consent to think about it. Eight months later, interviews commenced at the RIM offices in Waterloo and continued over the next two years.

Access was key, McQueen says. A book came out last year on RIM, called BlackBerry Planet, in which author Alastair Sweeny only had limited access to the RIM bosses via email. “It was decent enough book, but it didn’t have the stories” he was able to elicit, says McQueen.

Among the stories he was able to relate:

• Lazaridis read all the science books in the Windsor Public Library before he was 12, fixed the electrical system in his high school lab after it was damaged by fire and, aided by childhood friend Fregin, built his own computer that could add, subtract and play a game.

• While attending high school in Peterborough, Balsillie had five paper routes, ran a student painting business and worked at a local ski hill and the local General Electric plant.

• In the early days, Lazaridis interviewed every applicant and placed the utmost importance on hiring the right people. Among them was Michael Barnstijn, a UW math and computer science grad. “Michael was a genius,” said Lazaridis. “He was doing stuff quite frankly that few people at the time understood.”

• Lazaridis was blown away by Balsillie when he first met him. At the time, Balsillie worked for the local manufacturing firm Sutherland-Schultz, which wanted to acquire RIM. He was known as the closer, brought in to finalize deals. “When he walked in the door, you could just tell he presented a unique personality,” said Lazaridis. “The thought that came to mind was, ‘You want this person on your team.’ ”

• When Intel was designing a microprocessor for an early version of the RIM pager, the company thought so little of the project it assigned mostly college grads to the development team and dubbed it Show Low after a nearby town in Arizona. Later, leaders of the team called the project one of the highlights of their career.

• BellSouth in Atlanta spent $300 million to build a wireless data network, but had picked up only 30,000 customers by the spring of 1997 and was on the verge of scrapping the whole thing when Lazaridis persuaded them to hear one final pitch for the pager RIM had been working on.

• When Lazaridis and Balsillie went to BellSouth’s headquarters in Atlanta for the crucial meeting, they were so nervous, they left samples of the hand-held device in a taxi cab. When they were finally able to retrieve the samples, BellSouth executives found themselves looking at pagers made of wood, plastic and a pasted-on keyboard. Still, they were impressed. “Mike was just awesome in his demeanour” said Jim Hobbs of BellSouth. “He had those guys believing he could walk on water.” BellSouth later placed an order for the devices worth $70 million, RIM’s first big contract.

• During later negotiations on the same deal, Balsillie left a meeting at a key juncture to buy a sandwich. While driving around he was in a car accident, but continued negotiations on his cellphone while he made sure the other driver was OK and waited for police to arrive.

The partnerships RIM had with Intel and BellSouth in the 1990s were very unusual, McQueen said.

“Normally big players like that only want to play with other big players. Here they were dealing with RIM that had fewer than 100 employees, but they could see they were on to something.”

McQueen spends only a few pages on the stock option controversy in 2006, but devotes a whole chapter to the expensive patent fight with NTP Inc. The stock option problem was common among many firms in North America, he said, but the patent dispute was one of the most publicized patent cases in U.S. legal history.

Lazaridis and Balsillie saw a final draft and only made a few changes to correct technical mistakes. “If they had wanted to make all kinds of changes, I would have taken my name off the book.”

In the end, the BlackBerry book is really a story about having a dream and sticking with it, McQueen said.

“Being an entrepreneur, you don’t have a eureka moment,” he recalls Lazaridis saying. “It’s really about persistence. Obviously you have to have a vision, you have to know where you’re going, but you have to be persistent and, he’s the first to admit, have a little luck along the way.”

[UrbanWaterloo]

My Best Investment
Faith in RIM has paid off handsomely
BlackBerry maker one of Canadian market's greatest success stories
Steve Proceviat, Special to Globe and Mail Update
Published on Tuesday, Mar. 09, 2010 6:33PM EST
Last updated on Thursday, Mar. 11, 2010 7:50AM EST
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe...rticle1491910/


BlackBerry Bold, left, and Blackberry Tour are shown in Mountain View, Calif.

Who?
John Zechner, Chairman and chief investment officer, J. Zechner Associates Inc.

My Best Investment
If I were to pick one stock alone that's had the greatest impact on our portfolio, it would be Research In Motion. (RIM-T76.81-0.91-1.17%)

In our opinion, the company has been one of the great success stories in the Canadian market, generating an annualized rate of return of almost 40 per cent since it went public. Yet it continues to trade at a valuation that doesn't nearly reflect the strength of their product portfolio, the value of the BlackBerry brand and the inherent value of the relations they have established with almost all the major telecom companies in the world.

We met Jim Balsillie very early on in the process – just after they went public.

Many investors and analysts doubted the ultimate survivability of this company in the world of industry giants such as Nokia and Motorola, as well as some emerging players such as Palm. In our very first meeting, he said: “People don't understand that it's much easier to add voice to a data device than it is to add data to a voice device.” That comment ended up being somewhat prophetic as we look at who have been the losers in the market since that time: Motorola, Ericsson and Nokia, to a degree, the companies that were trying to add e-mail or texting capability to their wireless phones.

RIM, on the other hand, has continued to grow and become exceptionally profitable along the way.

But there's been a lot of cynicism all along, due in part to worries over competition, but also due to litigation issues the company's had to deal with on patents, including the payment to NTP of more than $600-million (U.S.) in early 2006 to settle a patent dispute that had threatened to cut off sales of the BlackBerry in the U.S.

The Return
We bought a small position on the IPO (initial public offering) back in 1997. Although the stock increased in value from $7 (Canadian) to over $180 over the next 21/2 years during the technology boom, it subsequently crashed back down to under $30 when the tech bubble burst.

But from a split-adjusted value of $1.50 for the IPO, to [Feb. 23's] price of $72.20, the annualized return on the stock over that 12-year period, as I calculate it, has been a very impressive 38 per cent.

The stock has been in our portfolio at various weights over the past 12 years, usually between 1.5 per cent and 3 per cent of our total equity investments, or about $20-million to $40-million. Currently, it has a higher weight (around 5 per cent) since it is a larger part of the index and we feel its valuation is more attractive than it has been in some time.

The stock has performed exceptionally well over the long term. Obviously, it's a volatile stock, given the nature of its business and the sector that it's in – but when I think which stock has had the largest single impact on our portfolio over the last 12 years, RIM has been the one.

The Takeaway
I think a growth-stock investment like this shows the importance of diversifying your sources of information and having a longer-term view.

Although we've maintained regular contact with the company, particularly in the early years, we've also listened to what RIM's competitors are saying, as well as its key customers, the global telecom carriers.

With a volatile stock like this, it's also important not to get too caught up in emotional short-term trading. Investors have had a real love-hate relationship with this stock, willingly paying over 30-times earnings when the growth momentum has been stronger and aggressively selling at as low as 12-times earnings when the competitive landscape looks more challenging or corporate developments, such as litigation, increase the risk.

In our opinion, investors also try to trade the stock too much in front of earnings reports. Everyone wants to own it if they beat the numbers, and sell it in case they miss expectations.

This strategy might work if you have some sense of how a particular quarter has shaped up relative to expectations, but the problem with a growth stock like this is that you might avoid the short-term move down from $70 to $64 on a “miss,” but you also risk missing the stronger long-term move from $70 to $150, because investors tend not to want to pay $75 for a stock they may have recently sold at $70.

Do the work, know the investment, and then stick to your guns – update your knowledge of the company, but don't overtrade the stock.

[IEFBR14]

the annualized return on the stock over that 12-year period, as I calculate it, has been a very impressive 38 per cent.

I hope no one, least of all Zechner, expects anywhere near that rate of growth over the next 12 years.

[UrbanWaterloo]

Definitely not as RIM is simply too large of a company now to grow that quickly percentage-wise (much easier to double sales of $1-million than $1-billion).

Welcome to the boards btw!

[Spokes]

As a Blackberry nerd myself, they really should have used some of the new Blackberrys. Glad they're using the Tour, but no Bold 9700? Curve 8330? Come on! hah.

[UrbanWaterloo]

RIM's Indonesian bonanza
Research In Motion may be struggling to make major inroads in parts of East Asia, but in this archipelago nation a sore thumb and a BlackBerry are symbols of success
Mark MacKinnon, Jakarta — Globe and Mail Update
Published on Wednesday, Mar. 24, 2010 8:15PM EDT
Last updated on Friday, Mar. 26, 2010 2:26AM EDT
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/...rticle1511040/


A shopkeeper shows a customer how to use BlackBerry in a shop at the ITC Ambassador shopping mall in Jakarta

Between puffs on his cigarette, Kemal Arsjad pounds out a quick response to one of the hundreds of fresh e-mails on his BlackBerry Bold. On the table in front of him, his second mobile phone, a BlackBerry Pearl, flashes a notice that more messages await.

At the next table, another young Indonesian man surfs the Internet on his BlackBerry. Here in the high-end Pacific Place shopping mall, BlackBerrys abound as Jakarta's young and connected sip their iced cappuccinos on a weekday afternoon. Only one Apple iPhone is in sight – and its owner also has a BlackBerry Bold on the table before him.

While Waterloo, Ont.-based Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM-T75.11-0.74-0.98%) has struggled to make major inroads in China, Japan and other parts of East Asia, its BlackBerry phones are a runaway success in Indonesia. The world's fourth-largest country – population 240 million – is also one of the hottest mobile phone markets.

RIM has sold 1.2 million BlackBerrys in Indonesia – many times more than the combined number of iPhones and Google Androids, according to Nanda Ivens, director of IndoPacific Edelman, which was hired by RIM to handle its social-media promotions in the region.

Several million Chinese-made BlackBerry knockoffs – known as “Chinaberries” – are also in use here, openly sold at markets alongside legitimately produced BlackBerrys (which are often smuggled into the country to avoid taxes).

A number of factors play into BlackBerry's success in Indonesia, most notably the expensive, yet patchy, broadband service in this equator-straddling archipelago. This problematic access drives many Indonesians to use their mobile phones to access the Internet, not laptops or computers.

Another key to BlackBerry's success with Indonesians is the issuing of prepaid scratch cards that allow users to pay a set amount for data and e-mail service each week or month. (It's the same payment method most Indonesians use with other mobile phones: Once scratched, the card reveals a number the owner uses to activate the account.)

“You cannot implement RIM's campaign for the rest of the world here in Indonesia. We're different,” said Mr. Arsjad, a software developer. “They changed their strategy for Indonesia.”

The gregarious 33-year-old has been a big part of that strategy, designing dozens of applications specifically for BlackBerry users in Indonesia, including a national Yellow Pages directory, local chat services and applications that allow users to order from the menus of restaurants in Jakarta and elsewhere in the country.

In addition to being user-friendly, RIM got into the Indonesian market ahead of competitors. “Indonesia is one of the brighter spots for RIM in the Asia-Pacific region,” said Kevin Restivo, a Toronto-based analyst at research firm IDC. “The vendor has shipped BlackBerrys to the country since 2005, four years ahead of Apple, one of its primary smart phone competitors on this side of the world.”

Mr. Restivo said that while Apple's touch-screen phones have proven more popular in markets such as South Korea, Indonesians prefer the QWERTY keyboards most BlackBerry models use. Partially as a result, Nokia is BlackBerry's main competitor in Indonesia, he said.

“In other [Asian] markets, BlackBerry is for business, and the iPhone is the thing to have,” Mr. Ivens said. “But over here, the BlackBerry is the thing to have and iPhone is only for Apple addict.”

Jakarta residents say BlackBerry first took off among Indonesia's business class with the 2006 launch of the BlackBerry Bold. Quickly, a sore thumb and a BlackBerry on your hip became symbols that you'd made it in Indonesia.

“It's a deal with the devil, because once you have a BlackBerry you can never escape your e-mails,” said Wimar Witoelar, a well-known political analyst and self-confessed BlackBerry addict who was a spokesman for former Indonesian president Abdurrahman Wahid. “But with a BlackBerry, you are a somebody.”

Laughing, Mr. Witoelar confessed: “I sleep with it on my pillow.”

(As he speaks, two of his colleagues pound away on their own BlackBerrys with a speed that would impress the fastest-thumbed Canadian. One posts Mr. Witoelar's comments on Twitter, while the other tweets about how foreigners seem to be fascinated by Indonesians' addiction to their BlackBerrys.)

The only downside to RIM's success is that it has inspired a host of Chinaberry knockoffs. Phone sellers in Jakarta estimate that for every legitimate BlackBerry they sell, they move many times more Chinaberries.

“Chinese companies make phones that look just like BlackBerry and sell 10 times as fast,” said Mulyadi Setiakusuma, general manager for distribution at the Sellular Shop retail chain.

The reason is simple, he said: Knockoffs sell for less than $100, while a new BlackBerry Bold costs roughly $500.

For many Indonesians, however, only the real thing will do. Mr. Arsjad, the software developer, said a course called “Java for Blackberries” will be added to the curriculums at five Indonesian universities this year.

“There's only one other place where they have that,” he laughed. “In Canada.”

[Citified_D]

RIM'S fourth-quarter results out today.

[UrbanWaterloo]

Research In Motion Reports Year-End and Fourth Quarter Results for Fiscal 2010
Mar 31, 2010 16:15 ET - http://www.marketwire.com/press-rele...MM-1141136.htm

WATERLOO, ONTARIO--(Marketwire - March 31, 2010) - Research In Motion Limited (RIM) (NASDAQ:RIMM)(TSX:RIM), a world leader in the mobile communications market, today reported results for the three months and fiscal year ended February 27, 2010 (all figures in U.S. dollars and U.S. GAAP).

Annual Highlights:

• Revenue grew 35% over the prior fiscal year to $15 billion
• BlackBerry® subscriber account base grew 65% over the prior fiscal year to over 41 million, with a record 4.9 million net new subscriber accounts added in Q4
• BlackBerry smartphone shipments grew more than 40% over the prior fiscal year to 37 million
• BlackBerry was the number one selling smartphone brand in the United States at the end of calendar 2009(1)
• GAAP earnings per share grew 30% over the prior fiscal year to $4.31 per share diluted

Revenue for the fiscal year ended February 27, 2010 was $14.95 billion, up 35% from $11.07 billion last year. Revenue for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2010 was $4.08 billion, up 18% from $3.46 billion in the same quarter of last year and up 4% from $3.92 billion in the previous quarter. The revenue breakdown for the quarter was approximately 80% for devices, 16% for service, 2% for software and 2% for other revenue. Gross margin for the fourth quarter was 45.7% compared to 42.7% in the prior quarter. RIM shipped approximately 37 million devices during fiscal 2010 and approximately 10.5 million devices in the fourth quarter.

Approximately 4.9 million net new BlackBerry subscriber accounts were added in the quarter. At the end of the quarter, the total BlackBerry subscriber account base was over 41 million.

"RIM has completed another outstanding fiscal year with record revenue, earnings and subscriber results. Our company and partnerships continued to thrive within one of the most dynamic industries in the world. We managed to significantly expand our international market share while also maintaining our longstanding leadership in North America where BlackBerry continues to be the top selling smartphone brand," said Jim Balsillie, Co-CEO at Research In Motion. "We are off to a great start in fiscal 2011 and expect strong shipments, revenue, subscriber and earnings growth in Q1. We are also very excited about our portfolio of products and services for the coming year and we continue to see exceptional opportunity for sustained growth."

Net income for fiscal 2010 was $2.46 billion, or $4.31 per share diluted, up 29.8% over fiscal 2009. Net income for the quarter was $710.1 million, or $1.27 per share diluted, compared with net income of $628.4 million, or $1.10 per share diluted, in the prior quarter and net income of $518.3 million, or $0.90 per share diluted, in the same quarter last year.

Revenue for the first quarter of fiscal 2011 ending May 29, 2010 is expected to be in the range of $4.25-4.45 billion. Gross margin for Q1 is expected to be approximately 44.5%. Net subscriber account additions in the first quarter are expected to be between 4.9-5.2 million. Earnings per share for the first quarter are expected to be in the range of $1.31 – $1.38 per share diluted.

The total of cash, cash equivalents, short-term investments and long-term investments was $2.87 billion as at February 27, 2010, compared to $2.41 billion at the end of the previous quarter, an increase of $461 million over the prior quarter. Uses of cash in the quarter included capital expenditures of $258 million and the acquisition of intangible assets of $36 million.

(1) IDC, "IDC announces the Top Ten Converged Mobile Devices in the United States for 4Q09", February 5, 2010

Research In Motion Limited
Incorporated under the Laws of Ontario
(United States dollars, in thousands except per share data) (unaudited)
Consolidated Statements of Operations


Consolidated Balance Sheets

[urbandreamer]

RIMM fell on Thursday and while the weekly chart looks bearish--$40 a strong possibility again--some folks are even more bearish---Is RIM the next Palm? A scary thought for the local economy! I wonder if RIM will join the ipad revolution?

[jay]

They have some tricks up there sleeve. A new bold that has a touch screen and a keyboard is one.

Plus once the new browser comes out it will help RIM a lot. It's one of there bigger issues IMO...

[Spokes]

They have some tricks up there sleeve. A new bold that has a touch screen and a keyboard is one.

Plus once the new browser comes out it will help RIM a lot. It's one of there bigger issues IMO...

Anyone else thinks that it looks like the Palm Pre?

As for the browser, its a definite issue. I along with a number of other Blackberry users use Opera rather then the Blackberry browser. What about BB users on here?

[DHLawrence]

I use Bolt, though I haven't been very happy with the latest release. Far too slow and clunky for my liking, especially when it used to be as fast as a standard browser. The new BB browser had better be out of this world. Did anyone use it when it was a third-party browser? Can't remember the old name for it.