Read "Losing the Signal", Rise & Fall of Blackberry. Good book.

Several Globe & Mail reporters wrote this book. They had access to many current and former employees, including the two former CEO's. Very good book and it gives insights as to what happened and how it drove off the road. Some observations.

1. Apple was not the BB killer but Android was. BB was able to survive several years after the introduction of the iphone as AT&T had an exclusive arrangement. However, BB ticked off so many carriers (more to follow) that when Google rolled out Android, many of them, especially Verizon, jumped at the opportunity and even footed the marketing bills.

2. Verizon. Verizon begged BB to come up with an Iphone killer. Begged. BB rolled out the Storm in less than five months. It was filled with bugs, didn't work well, and all Storms sold by Verizon had to be returned, over a million of them. Often the replacement was just as bad. Verizon wanted BB to eat the cost of the returns, all of $500 million. Verizon had also spent $100 million on a marketing campaign for Storm. BB refused. It made concessions, reimbursed V for $100 million, but Verizon was still burned and burned badly.

3. Verizon again. After the failure of the Storm, Verizon was upgrading its network to 4g to handle all the data. Lazardis and cohorts flew in to meet with Verizon along with other competitors. While the competitors showed off 4g Handset prototypes, lazardis told them NOT to go to 4G and that it would not work. BB specialized in data compression and did not have a phone, not even an experimental model, built to work on 4g. THIS was the episode that made Verizon dump BB. It forced Verizon to go in the direction of Motorola and Droid. BB never recovered.

4. The options and patent lawsuits wore out the two CEO's more than anyone realized. It consumed their time and left them little able to cope with the future.

5. Braisille developed BBM and saw it as a way to take BB forward. Remember, this is before Kik and Whatsapp. He wanted to take it cross platform and make it the standard for messaging apps. Lazardis wasn't crazy about it as a hardware guy. B said future was software and this would help BB convert. Carriers actually got on board with it and a project he called SMS 2.0. They were VERY interested. The successor CEO, Heins, who was a hardware guy under Lazardis and responsible for making the crappy handsets, killed it all when he became CEO. He finally went cross with BBM in October 2013. Whatsapp sold to FB for $20 billion. That could have been BBM.


5. Apple killed it but not with the iphone itself. The carriers would not let BB sell apps, and kept it from being truly innovative in some ways. Apple was the one who made the carriers change their rules. The carriers did not allow BB to have a good browser as it didn't want their bandwidth hogged. APple changed that paradigm. BB saw the carriers as customers. Apple saw consumers as the customer. Huge difference.

6. Conlee, the COO, left. around 2010 or so. He was the hatchet man, the enforcer. He held people accountable. Once he left, there was no accountability. His job was divided among three people. A culture of factions and no accountability resulted. Everything grew stagnant and a not my fault mentaility took over the company while its competitors were moving forward. Current CEO, Chen, said THIS was his biggest challenge, changing the culture. Conlee was the Ice Cold and Cirkus Child of Blackberry and the one who really made the company work when it was successful.

7. Playbook. It killed the company when it needed all of its resources the most. It had no email. They decided to base apps on Adobe Air when no developers were using that program to make apps. The "bridge" alienated the carriers as it deprived them of tethering fees. The deadline was totally unreasonable. The playbook was developed in a state of panic.



This is how you go for first to worst. Ignore your markets, tell the customers not to move forward, sell them crappy products while refusing to make it up to them, and stifle all innovation while avoiding any accountability.