The Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of #BlackBerry

The iPhone’s popularity with consumers was illogical to rivals such as RIM, Nokia Corp. and Motorola Inc. The phone’s battery lasted less than eight hours, it operated on an older, slower second-generation network, and, as Mr. Lazaridis predicted, music, video and other downloads strained AT&T’s network. RIM now faced an adversary it didn’t understand. 

Condensed and adapted from the forthcoming book “Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry,” to be released Tuesday.

This from the Wall St. Journal. 

The Inside Story of How the iPhone Crippled BlackBerry

Research In Motion’s Jim Balsillie, left, and Mike Lazaridis in 2006. Photo: Norm Betts/Bloomberg News

ByJacquie McNish and

Sean Silcoff

May 22, 2015 12:25 p.m. ET

Mike Lazaridis was home on his treadmill when he saw the televised report about Apple Inc. ’s newest product. Research In Motion ’s founder soon forgot about exercise that day in January 2007. There was Steve Jobs on a San Francisco stage waving a small glass object, downloading music, videos and maps from the Internet onto a device he called the iPhone.

“How did they do that?” Mr. Lazaridis wondered. His curiosity turned to disbelief when Stanley Sigman, the chief executive of Cingular Wireless joined Mr. Jobs to announce a multiyear contract with Apple to sell iPhones. What was Cingular’s parent AT&T Inc. thinking? “It’s going to collapse the network,” Mr. Lazaridis thought.

The next day Mr. Lazaridis grabbed his co-CEO Jim Balsillie at the office and pulled him in front of a computer.

“Jim, I want you to watch this,” he said, pointing to a webcast of the iPhone unveiling. “They put a full Web browser on that thing. The carriers aren’t letting us put a full browser on our products.”

Mr. Balsillie’s first thought was RIM was losing AT&T as a customer. “Apple’s got a better deal,” Mr. Balsillie said. “We were never allowed that. The U.S. market is going to be tougher.”

“These guys are really, really good,” Mr. Lazaridis replied. “This is different.”

“It’s OK—we’ll be fine,” Mr. Balsillie responded.

RIM’s chiefs didn’t give much additional thought to Apple’s iPhone for months. “It wasn’t a threat to RIM’s core business,” says Mr. Lazaridis’s top lieutenant, Larry Conlee. “It wasn’t secure. It had rapid battery drain and a lousy [digital] keyboard.”

If the iPhone gained traction, RIM’s senior executives believed, it would be with consumers who cared more about YouTube and other Internet escapes than efficiency and security. RIM’s core business customers valued BlackBerry’s secure and efficient communication systems. Offering mobile access to broader Internet content, says Mr. Conlee, “was not a space where we parked our business.”

ENLARGE

Photo: Flatiron Books

The iPhone’s popularity with consumers was illogical to rivals such as RIM, Nokia Corp. and Motorola Inc. The phone’s battery lasted less than eight hours, it operated on an older, slower second-generation network, and, as Mr. Lazaridis predicted, music, video and other downloads strained AT&T’s network. RIM now faced an adversary it didn’t understand. 

“By all rights the product should have failed, but it did not,” said David Yach, RIM’s chief technology officer. To Mr. Yach and other senior RIM executives, Apple changed the competitive landscape by shifting the raison d’être of smartphones from something that was functional to a product that was beautiful.

“I learned that beauty matters....RIM was caught incredulous that people wanted to buy this thing,” Mr. Yach says

Read the rest of the excerpt online here: The Inside Story of How the iPhone Crippled BlackBerry - WSJ

India eyes Google and Skype in security crackdown - Yahoo! News

India eyes Google and Skype in security crackdown

By ERIKA KINETZ, AP Business WriterFri Aug 13, 11:18 am ET

MUMBAI, India – India may ask Google and Skype for greater access to encrypted information once it resolves security concerns with BlackBerrys, which are now under threat of a ban, according to a government document and two people familiar with the discussions.

The 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai, which were coordinated with satellite and cell phones, helped prompt a sweeping security review of telecommunications ahead of the Commonwealth Games — a major sporting event to be held in New Delhi in October.

Some analysts say more anonymous technologies — like the basic Nokia phones used by 10 gunmen who rampaged through Mumbai in November 2008, leaving 166 dead — and Gmail are more likely to be used to plan terror attacks than BlackBerry devices, which require reliable identity proof and contact information.

On July 12, officials from India's Department of Telecommunications met with representatives of three telecom service provider groups to discuss interception and monitoring of encrypted communications by security agencies.

"There was consensus that there are more than one type of service for which solutions are to be explored," according to a copy of the minutes of the meeting obtained by The Associated Press. "Some of them are BlackBerry, Skype, Google etc. It was decided first to undertake the issue of BlackBerry and then the other services."

"They have clearly instructed us that after BlackBerry, they are going to take to task Google, Skype and similar services that bypass the monitoring department of India," said Rajesh Chharia, president of the Internet Service Providers Association of India, who attended the meeting. "According to the law, they have to allow monitoring."

The officials' immediate concern was the BlackBerry, but they also plan to look at Google and other companies that use encryption for e-mail and messaging services, said Rajan Mathews, director general of the Cellular Operators Association of India, who was briefed on the meeting.

Google and Skype said Friday they haven't received any notices from the government.

The Home Ministry said present talks involve only BlackBerry maker, Canada-based Research In Motion.

"We are talking only to BlackBerry," ministry spokesman D.R.S. Chaudhary said Friday. "Not to Google or others."

On Thursday, India threatened to ban BlackBerry services unless the device's manufacturer makes them accessible to its security agencies by Aug. 31.

On Friday, Research In Motion Vice President Robert E. Crowe met with Home Ministry officials in New Delhi to try to avoid the ban.

"I am optimistic," Crowe told reporters after the meeting.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have also threatened to cut off popular BlackBerry services unless they get greater access. Like India, they've cited security concerns in pushing to access encrypted information sent by the cell phones that gets routed through servers overseas.

Rights groups fear such access could be abused.

Research In Motion said in a Thursday statement that it maintains a consistent global standard for legal access to encrypted information which precludes making specific deals for specific countries.

All such access must be governed by a country's laws and must be applied equally to all vendors and all technologies, RIM said.

It also reiterated that it cannot "unlock" secure corporate e-mails. "Contrary to any rumors, the security architecture is the same around the world and RIM truly has no ability to provide its customers' encryption keys," it said.

The U.S. has technology to crack encrypted BlackBerry messages, which it can legally use when national security is at stake, diplomats say.

India is keen to get the U.S. to transfer technologies, like de-encryption, as part of high-level bilateral discussions on technology transfer likely to come up at Obama's state visit to India in November, diplomats say.

For now, more humble devices may present a greater security threat than the BlackBerrys used by India's business elite.

Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, the lone surviving gunman in the 2008 Mumbai attack, told an Indian court that he and his comrades all had Nokia mobile phones.

Photographs of court evidence show that the gunmen carried the most basic Nokia handsets.

"We did not find any Blackberrys," Special Prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam, who led the case against Kasab, said in an interview.

The relative anonymity and disposability of prepaid mobile phones and Web mail make them attractive to criminals, said Prasanto K. Roy, chief editor at CyberMedia Publications, a trade magazine group.

He said terrorists would likely opt to use disposable handsets and keep changing the SIM cards. Another hard-to-trace method would be to use Internet-based e-mail, like Gmail, updating and saving messages as drafts to avoid interception, he said.

RIM has fast expanded its presence in India from 114,000 users in early 2008 to an estimated 700,000 today — four-fifths of whom are corporate clients, who would be hit by a ban, Roy said.

RIM won't break out the number of users in India.

India has suffered deadly attacks, by both home grown and foreign militants, with some regularity for years. Many BlackBerry users here say national security trumps personal convenience.

"If BlackBerry cannot provide a solution for the security threat to the nation, we're happy to let go of the services," said Sharad Dhariwal, a 26-year-old investment banker.

That could be good news for Nokia — RIM's chief competitor here — and Apple, which recently brought the iPhone to India.

Associated Press writers Nirmala George and Ashok Sharma in New Delhi and Da Yan in Mumbai contributed to this report.


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India eyes Google and Skype in security crackdown - Yahoo! News

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Saudi Arabia: Blackberry Service To Continue

Saudi Arabia: Blackberry Service To Continue
August 10, 2010

Saudi Arabia will allow the continued usage of Blackberry messenger services and will work with Blackberry service providers to fulfill regulations set by the Saudi Arabian Communication and Information Technology Commission (CITC) on Aug. 3, state-owned SPA reported Aug. 10. The CITC will continue to evaluate the usage and service provided by telecommunications companies for the device.

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Saudi says deal reached on BlackBerry services - Technology & science - Tech and gadgets - msnbc.com

Saudi says deal reached on BlackBerry services

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STR / AP

A Saudi customer is served in a mobile shop at a market in the capital Riyadh, Saudi Arabia Thursday, Aug. 5, 2010. Some Saudis are trying to sell their BlackBerrys ahead of a ban on the smart phone's messenger service in the kingdom _ but with few willing to buy, they're having to slash prices. (AP Photo)

By ABDULLAH AL-SHIHRI

updated 1 hour 4 minutes ago

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Saudi Arabia and the makers of the BlackBerry smartphone have reached a deal on accessing users' data that will avert a ban on the phone's messenger service, a Saudi official said Saturday.

The agreement, involving placing a BlackBerry server inside Saudi Arabia, would allow the government to monitor users' messages and allay official fears the service could be used for criminal purposes, the official said.
The deal could have wide-ranging implications for several other countries, including India and the United Arab Emirates, which have expressed similar concerns over how BlackBerry maker Research in Motion Ltd., handles data.
The Saudi regulatory official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the details of the deal with the media, said tests were now under way to determine how to install a BlackBerry server inside the country.
Canadian International Trade Minister Peter Van Loan confirmed Friday to the Associated Press that Canadian officials were in talks with the Canada-based maker and Saudi officials in a bid to avert the ban. RIM has declined to comment on the talks.
The kingdom is one of a number of countries expressing concern that the device is a security threat because encrypted information sent on the phones is routed through overseas computers — making it impossible for local governments to monitor.
Critics, however, maintain that Saudi Arabia and other countries are more motivated by the desire to further curb freedom of expression and strengthen already tight controls over the media than by a fear of terrorism.
The United Arab Emirates has announced it will ban BlackBerry e-mail, messaging and Web browsing starting in October, and Indonesia and India are also demanding greater control over the data.
Analysts say RIM's expansion into fast-growing emerging markets is threatening to set off a wave of regulatory challenges, as its commitment to keep corporate e-mails secure rubs up against the desires of local law enforcement.
RIM says it does offer help to governments, but says its technology does not allow it, or any third party, to read encrypted e-mails sent by corporate BlackBerry users. The consumer version has a lower level of security.
Saudi Arabia's telecommunications regulator, known as the Communications and Information Technology Commission, announced the imminent ban on Tuesday, saying the BlackBerry service "in its present state does not meet regulatory requirements," according to the state news agency SPA.
Saudi security officials fear the service could be used by militant groups. The kingdom has been waging a crackdown for years against al-Qaida-linked extremists.
Saudi Arabia also enforces heavy policing of the Internet, blocking sites both for political content and for obscenities.
BlackBerry phones are known to be popular both among businesspeople and youth in the kingdom, where local media estimate there are some 750,000 BlackBerry users, who see the phones' relatively secure communication features as a way to avoid attention from the authorities.

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Saudi says deal reached on BlackBerry services - Technology & science - Tech and gadgets - msnbc.com