Losing the Signal: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of BlackBerry by Jacquie McNish, Sean Silcoff Read Free Book Online Page A

made in the fledgling mobile phone business.
    Within five years after Motorola launched its bulky brick phone in 1983, Finland’s Nokia, Germany’s Siemens, and Korea’s Samsung joined the cellular phone race. Ericsson followed, but its engineering-driven culture struggled in a Madison Avenue world of slogans and product branding. Early Ericsson phones were lightweight marvels, but their dull brown and gray covers and plain female names, “Jane” and “Sandra,” doomed what were then some of the more advanced cellphones on the market.
    Like Motorola, Ericsson spotted a lasting opportunity in wireless plumbing. There was good money to be made selling expensive infrastructure that relayed and directed data traffic along radio channels. Ericsson had collaborated with Sweden’s government-owned phone company Televerket in designing the Mobitex network, allowing ambulances and emergency response vehicles to send and receive data messages. Eyeing a bigger market outside its small home country, Ericsson launched a campaign to sell Mobitex globally. If customers bought the network, they would have to invest in Ericsson’s expensive line of base stations, relay equipment, and portable terminals. The first set of Mobitex components sold in North America went to New Jersey–based RAM Mobile Data. The second was housed in the boxes Lazaridis examined in Rogers’ offices.
    The basement ballroom of Toronto’s King Edward Hotel was transformed into corporate Neverland. A dozen weeping fig trees had been stationed around the room, covered in small delicate lights to create just the look David Neale wanted: an enchanted forest for an enchanted radio team. On this late afternoon in May 1990, he had invited dozens of communications executives, journalists, and consultants to attend a presentation by Rogers on the new future in state-of–the-art wireless communications.
    Guests were not disappointed. A short multiscreen slide presentation featured men in construction hats staring, eyes narrowed, at a glowing horizon, as 1s and 0s symbolizing binary code flew across a luminous rising moon. The wireless data revolution had arrived, a Rogers executive declared, and it was going to save businesses lots of money. Information would travel over radio waves to terminals in courier and service trucks, speeding the delivery of work orders, invoices, and payments. This was all possible because Rogers hadMobitex. The Swedish network connected computers to mobile terminals that traveled wherever business went. Mobile data was no longer the stuff of science fiction. The future was here. To reinforce the point, tables were loaded with portable Mobitex terminals displaying test text messages dispatched from a distant location.
    “What we were showing was very futuristic,” Neale says. So futuristic no one visiting the enchanted forest realized the display was still a fantasy. None of the machines actually worked on Mobitex yet. The terminals were wired into a computer simulating radio transmissions. Lazaridis and his team at RIM had been making progress with the Mobitex network, but they were still months from designing software and components that would allow North American computers to communicate with the Swedish network. Neale couldn’t afford to wait any longer. His enchanted radio team was in danger of being shut down if he couldn’t convince his bosses and potential customers that there was a market for Mobitex’s wireless network. “Everyone had a most pleasant time,” recalls Neale. “We just didn’t sell much.” Five months later, Rogers began losing patience with the radio dream and transferred many of the group’s staff to its rapidly expanding pager division. Neale left shortly after to join a telephone company, and RIM was left with contract scraps from Rogers and Ericsson.
    Rick Brock sped up as he exited Cambridge, Ontario, steering his car east onto Highway 401. Next to him sat Jim Balsillie. The men were going on a