Audiobook. ( )

The book starts a bit on the slow and boring side, with a couple of biographical chapters I couldn't care less, to be honest, but once it enters the ~1999 era and the release of the first BlackBerry, the narration becomes more fast paced and interesting. There are a lot of insights about strategies, carrier relationships (and the way Apple disrupted them in a way no one though was possible), and manufacturing, other than the lengths RIM went through in delivering innovative services like fast, reliable and encrypted push email over GPRS networks. Then again, halfway through, it becomes a bit boring again during a couple of chapters about stocks. But when it moves on to the QNX acquisition and the opening of BBM it becomes good enough again. Overall, a very interesting book about the Canadian company, if you care about the subject. ( )

I never read books about business, because I'm completely uninterested in business but I found this book interesting because RIM is Canadian, and it's a fun pastime to rag on BlackBerry lately. I do remember a time when BBM was THE THING but for a lot of the time that BB was on top, I didn't even have a cell phone - I've mostly just observed its downfall.

The gist I got about Laziridis from this book is that he, though an impressive engineer, created something that changed that game by accident, and then just continued to make shit that he thought was cool. RIM didn't take the iPhone seriously because Lazaridis didn't think that people would sacrifice battery power and reliable coverage for apps and fully functional web browsers on their phones...he hated typing on touch screens and assumed that everyone else would hate it too. He seemed confused when BB devices didn't sell well or when no one could figure out how to market them. Plus, as they were playing catch-up with Apple and Google, they sacrificed quality in trying to get new things out as fast as possible. RIM probably could have come up with some amazing things if they weren't always trying to out-do everyone else, and were able to manage their company better.

I skimmed a bunch of this book on account of I don't understand business stuff. There was something about lawsuits and the stock market that I didn't quite follow, but it sounded terribly stressful and I'm glad I'm not responsible for billions of dollars and the proper running of a company. I would for sure do something illegal by accident and possibly go to jail.

So I guess you can read this book as a business how-not-to, or you can read it like I did and snicker at terms like "email pager". ( )

Losing the signal is a story of Blackberry showing the nature of the technology industry. It depicts the company’s rise and fall which happened in a very short period of time. It was one of the fastest technology races from 1999 when the first BlackBerry was introduced until 2013 when its business collapsed. In this period the company went from zero to 20 billion dollars to today’s one billion. One of the most important facts, worth mentioning is that BlackBerry is a Canadian company which played a significant, even iconic, role in its tech sector.

Many think that the birth of this company was a starting point for the Canadian tech industry as this was the moment when a few people decided to compete with giants, such as Motorola and Nokia. They started pretty slow as a pager company amongst other companies already on the Canadian market, but the feature that made them outstanding was a keyboard. This allowed bringing the internet to your palm. In the beginning, they targeted lawyers, bankers and other elite business people which was another great move as Blackberry became a symbol of somebody important. Next, when people like Oprah and Madonna started waving and saying that this device is awesome, the company gained its publicity and recognition.

So Blackberry became a global brand and everyone had to have it, including the most powerful people, on screen and in the White House. The company changed the way we communicate and introduced two new Canadian CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie. Nevertheless, technology kept evolving and Steve Jobs was on the hunt. All of a sudden blackberry stuck in time and its market share collapsed. Meanwhile, the 15-year-old business partnership has split up.

The book goes through the whole story of the company and the classic innovator’s dilemma. They invented a product that everyone loved, they changed our lives how we work how we communicate. Soon the two CEOs enjoyed being on top of the hill for a brief period of time and got the attention of the big Silicon Valley predators, such as Apple and Google and later Korean Samsung. In January 2007 Steve Jobs walked onto a stage and pointed at Blackberry by saying that he is going into the smartphone market which will be bigger than computers. Then Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie looked at the iPhone and heavily underestimated it because they thought that carriers would not be able to carry the capacity the iPhone would generate.

The book is also a bit biographical as it talks a lot about the two very different CEOs. Mike Lazaridis since he was a kid was the boy wizard. He spent a lot of his childhood in his parents’ basement doing all sorts of amazing things. He was confident that he was going to create things that were going to reinvent the world.

On the other hand, Jim Balsillie from an early age was a very intelligent leader and very much an outsider. He wasn’t good at school, nevertheless, he decided to follow the established route to success. He studied accounting and later got an MBA at Harvard.

The story of these two people is compelling and interesting. Is shows how two completely different characters were running the company. Mike Lazaridis, who didn’t understand business...(if you like to read my full review please visit my blog https://leadersarereaders.blog/losing-the-signal/) ( )

A short, easy to read history of the rise and fall of Blackberry. ( )