BlackBerry Planet

The Story of Research in Motion and the Little Device that Took the World by Storm

Alastair Sweeny

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780470159408
• eBook ISBN: 9780470675816
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Subtopic: Industria de medios y comunicaciones

BlackBerry Planet is a new tribe of people who simply cannot get along without their favorite device, Research in Motion's innovative electronic organizer, the BlackBerry. This omnipresent device has gone beyond being the world's foremost mobile business tool and entered the consumer mainstream as the Swiss Army Knife of smart phones.

BlackBerry Planet tells the behind-the-scenes story of how this little device has become the machine that connects the planet. Starting with the early years of Mike Lazaridis' invention and his founding of RIM at age 23, it details his drive to innovate, developing what was a glorified pager into the essential corporate communicator, used by everyone from dealmakers to the Queen, from movie stars to the entire US Congress. Since 1992, Lazaridis and co-CEO Jim Balsillie together have been the driving force behind the RIM story.

With access to senior staffers and former RIM employees, BlackBerry Planet tells the inside story about the branding and marketing success of the BlackBerry, from its use during 9/11, which earned RIM a reputation for security and reliability, to the cultural adoption of the iconic device as a must-have symbol, to the backlash against the addictive properties of the "CrackBerry, " and the various patent suits RIM has had to fight off – including the five-year court battle that resulted in the largest technology patent settlement in US history.

As the incredible story of the BlackBerry unfolds, and as RIM battles global giants like Nokia and Apple in the emerging super-phone marketplace, users, fans, investors and competitors can look to BlackBerry Planet for the insight and context of where they've been, to try and predict where they're going.

1

The Planet Goes BlackBerry

“When they go to work, people expect a phone, a desk, a chair, a light. And a BlackBerry has really taken on that status.”

—Mike Lazaridis

Mike Lazaridis’s little device is the favorite fruit of 25 million people across the planet who just can’t get along without their innovative electronic organizer. But a scarce ten years ago, the BlackBerry was known to only a few movers and shakers in Washington, on Wall Street or in big high-tech firms like Intel and IBM.

Back in 1999, Research In Motion (RIM) built the first reliable product to offer two-way mobile e-mail and messaging. At that time, pagers holstered on belts were part of the MD’s or Wall Street broker’s uniform. But they allowed only one-way communication. Lazaridis had realized that corporate technophiles wouldn’t want to be tethered to their computers and would, instead, love to work anywhere, sending and receiving e-mail directly on their pagers.

So, the BlackBerry easily won a favored spot on the belts of hard-charging political staffers and business professionals, from wireless warriors, out in the field and battling for market share, to cubicle cowboys lunching at their desks, hunched over BlackBerrys and juggling work and home.

Today, the BlackBerry monopolizes the world of work—nobody else comes close. An astounding 85 percent of public corporations are supplying staff with the devices, and more than 175,000 BlackBerry Enterprise Servers are installed worldwide. The US Congress was RIM’s first big client, and Uncle Sam is still the biggest consumer of BlackBerrys. Today, more than 500,000 devices are installed in every department of the U.S. government and throughout the US Senate and House of Representatives.

Some larger corporations are handling tens of thousands of e-mail accounts securely and efficiently, and the top three or four companies each manage close to 100,000 BlackBerry users. Security is key. BlackBerry messages are secured with NATO-grade encryption, and network managers love the ability to freeze or wipe data from a lost or stolen BlackBerry.

The BlackBerry is also super-efficient. Studies show users can boost their productivity by 30 percent, and BlackBerry messaging is compressed, sometimes twenty times more than competing systems, so companies save a bundle in bandwidth costs.

But RIM has also adapted the BlackBerry to serve the consumer as well, and today more than 60 percent of users are outside the enterprise, buying their services from telecom providers.

RIM’s original wireless devices were just glorified two-way pagers, used mainly by police, firefighters, and ambulance drivers. But that was a maturing market. When the company added enterprise servers with e-mail, calendars and contact lists to its first BlackBerrys, RIM started to get some real traction on Wall Street and inside the Washington Beltway. RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie was so confident that they had a winner on their hands, he seeded hundreds of those first BlackBerrys to influential users. Soon, a growing number of leading executives, bankers, opinion makers and politicians were adopting the addictive little devices.

Unfortunately for RIM, the BlackBerry was still unknown on Main Street, and growth sputtered. The big telecom providers weren’t helping the picture. At the time, they were obsessed with selling their cell phone services, and wireless texting was a distinctly unsexy secondary market.

It took a tragedy to get the BlackBerry to launch velocity, and it happened suddenly, on September 11, 2001.

During the horrific attacks that day in New York and Washington, the only people trapped in the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers who were able to contact their loved ones after cell service failed were those with BlackBerrys. Police, firefighters, and ambulance drivers and U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney all used their BlackBerry devices during the crisis.

According to a RIM insider at the time, “During 9/11, RIM staff were PINning [messaging] the hell out of the Mobitex and DataPac networks used by people with BlackBerrys caught in the towers, while the support workers relied on them to communicate even while the regular cell lines were dead. The text network survived while the cell network died because it was barely used and signal strength was possible from remote nodes.”¹

Throughout the evacuation and collapse of the Twin Towers and during the surge in traffic, Cingular kept its text-only Mobitex network running despite losing many base stations in lower Manhattan. While slow at 12.5 kilobits per second, Mobitex on BlackBerrys kept running while others failed because it did not have to share precious bandwidth with voice. Also, even if an e-mail got delayed because of network congestion, it was queued and sent just a few seconds later.

After 9/11, more and more police and fire departments as well as U.S. federal authorities signed up for BlackBerry services. BlackBerrys also shone during the great 2003 Northeast Blackout and hurricanes Anita and Katrina. But it was in the U.S. Congress where the BlackBerry first gained a serious foothold, when all the politicians and their staffs were given the device, and all the lobbyists and people doing business in Washington followed. Capitol Hill became the first dedicated metropolis on BlackBerry Planet.

RIM’s BlackBerry first came to the notice of congressional leaders during 9/11 when poor communications hampered the evacuation of the Capitol building. Washington was literally under attack for the first time since August 1814. It was only by luck that the third plane did not crash into the Capitol or White House. Michigan Representative Fred Upton, who already owned a BlackBerry, was one of the few able to get messages in and out during the chaos. RIM suddenly had a sterling reputation for security, and the U.S. Congress took notice.

A few short weeks later, the October 2001 anthrax scare focused even more attention on BlackBerrys, since Congress had to start sterilizing mail for biological hazards and screening it for bombs. This event delayed regular mail delivery to lawmakers by up to two weeks.

Faced with these two crises, a rattled U.S. Congress promptly spent $6 million to buy BlackBerry Enterprise Servers and 3,000 devices for all 100 senators, 435 House members, and thousands of staffers. There were really no other contenders, and Capitol Hill was soon hooked. Within a few years, Congress had more than 8,200 installed BlackBerrys, and congressional servers were handling more than 25 million e-mail messages a month.

The BlackBerry quickly became a congressional essential. In 2006, Congress panicked and nearly declared a second American Revolution when Judge Spencer in Virginia, trying the NTP patent case against Research In Motion, threatened to shut down the BlackBerry service completely. Members of Congress rose unanimously against any threat to their constitutional right to bear BlackBerrys.

Today, BlackBerrys have become so pervasive in American politics, the show could probably not run without them. New Jersey Representative Scott Garrett, recently interviewed by Politico, had this to say about his BlackBerry use:

Garrett: Yeah, today I was without it for about 45 minutes, and the whole time it was like panic.

Politico: I don’t understand how members can outright not use one. It almost seems impossible.

Garrett: Well, obviously we did it before there were BlackBerrys.²

THE AGE OF TELEPOLITICS

U.S. politics today is a fast-moving, lobby-driven profession, and the BlackBerry is a perfect prop and timely tool for lawmakers. In Washington, D.C., every congressional committee meeting is like an electronic trading pit, where competing vote traders watch the action intently, thumbing messages to and from their home offices. And behind every successful politician you’ll find an army of BlackBerry toting “telepols,” all plugged in to their leader.

Florida Representative Adam Putnam, who was part of the first freshman class to be issued a BlackBerry, says that member-to-membermessaging is now pretty routine in the House. He says his party’s leadership has started e-mailing key materials directly to members each morning, bypassing press people and staff. He feels the handhelds have broadened members’ horizons by boosting their comfort level with the Internet: “So, you have members talking about what’s on Drudge or Town Hall or Red State.” BlackBerrys have “dragged members out of the Dark Ages and into the information age. You now have members conversant about blogs, online news sites, signed up for breaking news alerts. So they’re actually less insulated today . . . than they were before BlackBerry.”³

“Karl Rove has more bandwidth, I think, than any presidential advisor has ever had in history.”

—Mark McKinnon, Bush media consultant

The White House installed its first e-mail services under George Bush Senior, but he personally never used them. Now, however, the elder Bush describes himself as a “black belt wireless e-mailer.” During Houston Astros’ games, he sits behind home plate with his BlackBerry and waves back on TV when he gets e-mails from friends.

Bill Clinton was not a BlackBerry fan and sent only two e-mails during his entire term, preferring to use a secure cell phone and dedicated fax line. Even then, he felt increasingly isolated in the Oval Office, a place he liked to call “the crown jewel of the federal penal system.” According to Clinton aide Paul Begala, “Presidents can stay in touch with their pre-presidential friends, but they have to work at it. In the pre-BlackBerry age, presidents gave their friends their special, secret ZIP code, listed their names with the White House operator, with instructions to put the calls through, even gave out the cell phone numbers of close aides.”⁴

George W. Bush was expecting to be the first BlackBerry president, but he had to give his up on assuming office due to concerns about e-mail security and the Presidential Records Act (PRA). The PRA puts each president’s correspondence in the official record and ultimately up for public review or able to be subpoenaed by Congress or the courts. So, three days before Bush’s first inauguration, knowing he was about to be locked into the Oval Office, he sent a mournful message from [email protected] to forty-two friends and relatives that explained his predicament: “Since I do not want my private conversations looked at by those out to embarrass, the only course of action is not to correspond in cyberspace. This saddens me. I have enjoyed conversing with each of you.”

But for Bush’s entourage, some of whom used their Republican National Committee BlackBerrys and e-mail accounts, it was business as usual. During the 2002 election season, Bush’s friend and operative Karl Rove “wore his war room on his belt.” Rove’s BlackBerry held his Rolodex and e-mail system, which he used to flash marching orders to campaign workers and soothe worried lobbyists. Rove was such a BlackBerry devotee that Time magazine reported his device had “every appearance of being surgically attached to his hand.”

Rove, a.k.a. “The Boy Genius,” amazed people with his BlackBerry use. “It’s like haiku,” said a friend. Even in the middle of meetings with Bush, Rove would spin the thumbwheel and punch out pithy messages with his big thumbs. “Sometimes we’re in a meeting talking to each other,” said a colleague, “and BlackBerrying each other at the same time.”⁵

Unfortunately for Rove, his attempt to do an end-run around the PRA by using Republican National Committee e-mail accounts was slammed by a Washington judge, who called it an “apparently flagrant violation of the Presidential Records Act.”

George W. Bush’s lack of a BlackBerry may have insulated him more than he wanted to be. In Angler, Barton Gellman’s book about the Cheney vice presidency, Cheney was facing a growing revolt by the Justice Department over warrantless wiretapping, and the acting attorney general finally came to see Bush and told the president he was refusing to go ahead. This crisis had been going on for six weeks, and nobody had been able to tell the president.

Bush was completely shocked when he realized how insulated he had become.

Says journalist Julian Sanchez, “Nobody wants to give the boss unwelcome news, and so the person at the top of the hierarchy often ends up least aware of what’s going on. It’s all too easy to imagine an online president getting bogged down in an unmanageable flood of correspondence, but there’s also clear value in finding some way for folks at a few steps’ removed from the inner circle to circumvent the minders and get the attention of the president directly. Maybe it’s time for Digg.gov?”⁶

Bush recalled that when he was governor of Texas, “I stayed in touch with all kinds of people around the country, firing off e-mails at all times of the day to stay in touch with my pals.” When he returned to private life, says aide Karen...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• A Web Support Service for Readers
• Chapter 1 - The Planet Goes BlackBerry
• Chapter 2 - The Birth of the BlackBerry
• Chapter 3 - Lawsuits in Motion
• Chapter 4 - From Brand to Icon: Seven Years in Motion
• Chapter 5 - BlackBerry Jam
• Chapter 6 - The Rise of the TeleBrain
• Afterword: RIM on the Plateau?
• Index