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

HTC, founded only in 1997 and for the first 11 years of its existence was a little-known contract manufacturer for other brands, was valued at $33.8bn after the close of trading in Asia on Thursday,
HTC’s market value is also bigger company than either Sony or LG Electronics, according to Thomson Reuters data, but it remains smaller than Apple or Samsung Electronics, although unlike those two companies, the smartphone is the Taiwanese company’s sole business.
HTC shares are now a third higher than they were at the start of the year, while Nokia’s shares have fallen by a fifth over the same period

HTC overtakes Nokia in market value

FT.com / Telecoms - By Robin Kwong in Taipei
Published: April 7 2011 12:54 | Last updated: April 7 2011 12:54

Taiwan’s HTC has overtaken Nokia to become the third most valuable maker of mobile phones, highlighting the speed with which touchscreen-based smartphones have become a mass-market product in Europe and the US.
The growth of HTC, which was valued at $33.8bn after the close of trading in Asia on Thursday, also highlights the slide in value of Nokia which has failed to innovate in the new smartphone market.
The problems facing the Finnish mobile phone maker, which had a market capitalisation of $33.4bn based on Wednesday’s closing prices, were highlighted by Moody’s on Thursday.
The credit agency downgraded Nokia’s debt rating from A2 to A3, citing the company’s weakened market position and uncertainty over its transition to Microsoft’s Windows Phone software.
HTC’s market value is also bigger company than either Sony or LG Electronics, according to Thomson Reuters data, but it remains smaller than Apple or Samsung Electronics, although unlike those two companies, the smartphone is the Taiwanese company’s sole business.
HTC shares are now a third higher than they were at the start of the year, while Nokia’s shares have fallen by a fifth over the same period.
Nokia remains the world’s biggest producer of mobile devices by volume, with a 28.9 per cent global market share at the end of last year, according to Gartner.
But Nokia has fallen behind rivals in the smartphone market where Apple’s iPhone and Android-based phonemakers such as HTC have taken market share.
Nokia’s failure to compete culminated in a high-profile management reshuffle last year, with Steven Elop becoming the first non-Finnish chief executive of the company in its 145-year history.
Mr Elop, who joined Nokia from Microsoft, likened the company’s predicament to a man on a “burning platform” as he outlined a plan to transform the company and make it more competitive.
The American is now seeking to reinvent Nokia as a provider of premium smartphones based on Microsoft’s Windows Mobile platform.
HTC’s rapid rise reflects the speed with which touchscreen-based smartphones have become a mass-market product in Europe and the US.
Its sales last year was T$278.8bn ($9.6bn) and it shipped 24.7m units last year, according to Gartner, compared with 46.6m units of iPhones shipped last year.
While growth is expected to slow this year compared with 2010, the global smartphone market is still expected to grow by 50 per cent, according to IDC.
Unlike HTC, which was positioned from the start to take advantage of this trend, many other mobile phonemakers were caught off-guard by this rapid change.
HTC was founded only in 1997 and for the first 11 years of its existence was a little-known contract manufacturer for other brands. But since it made the world’s first Android-based phone for T-Mobile in 2008, the company has proved quick to adapt to the market’s changes.
HTC took advantage of the 18-month period in which it was the sole producer of Android-based phones to grow quickly in size. C.K. Cheng, analyst at CLSA, the equity brokerage, says that HTC’s scale means that “in times of tightness in the supply chain, such as now after the Japan earthquake, all the suppliers are going to ensure that Apple and HTC get their orders filled first rather than Motorola or Sony Ericsson”.
The rally in HTC’s shares also reflects the fact that it has been quick to fill the nascent market for phones running on much faster, fourth-generation networks. In the US, HTC’s Evo Shift, for Sprint’s network, and its Thunderbolt, for Verizon, are the only two 4G smartphones available on the market, although competing devices will soon be launched.
“Even if it is just a one or two-month lead, it is still a significant advantage,” Mr Cheng said.
However, some analysts, such as Morgan Stanley’s Jasmine Lu, worry that HTC will face increasing headwinds as competitors catch up, and may see its profit margins fall if low or mid-ranged smartphone models grow in popularity at the expense of premium models.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011
FT.com / Telecoms - HTC overtakes Nokia in market value

Google's Android is No. 1 smart phone platform

NEW YORK (AP) -- A research firm says Google Inc.'s Android has become the world's No. 1 smart phone software, surpassing Nokia Corp.'s Symbian operating system based on shipments in the fourth quarter of 2010.
Canalys said Monday that shipments of Android-based smart phones hit 32.9 million in the last three months of the year, while devices running the Symbian platform fell slightly behind at 31 million worldwide. Apple Inc. was in third place with 16.2 million units.
The overall smart phone market soared 89 percent in the fourth quarter, to 101.2 million units shipped, Canalys said.
"After a difficult 2009, the speed with which the market has recovered has required real commitment and innovation from vendors and they have risen to the challenge," said Canalys vice president and principal analyst Chris Jones in a statement.
Google first rolled out its free Android mobile software in 2008 on HTC Corp.'s G1 smart phone. It has since expanded to more than 170 phones and a number of tablet computers. The company said last week it is getting closer to releasing a version of the Android software meant for tablet computers, one that will include a fresh look and updated Web browser and keyboard.
Google's shares slipped 68 cents to $600.31 in morning trading, while American Depositary shares of Espoo, Finland-based Nokia climbed 10 cents to $10.66. Shares of Apple climbed $1.31 to $337.54.
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/110131/us_google_android.html?.v=1

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