Timeline: The rise and fall of BlackBerry

Tech giant gambled its future on the BlackBerry 10... that seems to have been a bust

Last updated: September 15, 2018 | 19:34

3 MIN READ

BlackBerry, which has steadily lost ground in the hyper-competitive market to Apple’s iPhone and devices running Google’s Android operating system, gambled its future on the BlackBerry 10, launched in January, That seems to have been a bust, given that the Canadian company is now considering selling itself to competitors.

Here are important milestones in the company’s history:

February 1985: Mike Lazaridis and Douglas Fregin co-found Research In Motion (RIM) as an electronics and computer science business based in Waterloo, Ontario, the Canadian university city where Lazaridis studied.
1992: Jim Balsillie joins RIM as co-CEO, mortgaging his house and investing $250,000 (Dh918,249).
1994: RIM launches a handheld point-of-sale card reader, which verifies debit and credit transactions directly to a bank.
1995: RIM builds its own radio modem for wireless e-mail.
1997: RIM lists on the Toronto Stock Exchange, raising more than $115 million.
January 1999: RIM launches rebranded BlackBerry e-mail service across North America, offering the first wireless device to sync with corporate e-mail systems. Sales jump 80 per cent to $85 million. The next year revenue reaches $221 million.
Late 1999: RIM introduces BlackBerry 850 Wireless Handheld, combining e-mail, wireless data networks and a traditional “Qwerty” keyboard. Demand explodes.
September 11, 2001: People trapped in New York’s World Trade Centre use their BlackBerrys to communicate after cellular networks collapse.
2002: RIM adds voice transmission to the BlackBerry.
2004: RIM’s subscriber base surpasses 1 million BlackBerry users.
January 2007: Apple Inc.’s Steve Jobs unveils first iPhone, and the company launches the BlackBerry competitor in June. Time magazine honours the phone as ‘Invention of the Year’.
November: Google’s open source Android platform is unveiled. It launches in October 2008.
May 2008: RIM introduces the Bold, a major redesign and still one of its top-tier products. The new model matches the resolution, but not size, of Apple’s iPhone screen.
July: Apple opens App Store in 22 countries and releases iPhone 3G, preloaded with App Store support.
November: RIM launches BlackBerry Storm, its first touchscreen and keyboard-less device. The model bombs.
June: Apple announces and releases iPhone 3GS.
August: RIM launches BlackBerry Torch, a touchscreen phone with slide-out keyboard and improved web browser.
April 19, 2011: RIM launches PlayBook and early reviews pan the tablet for lacking core BlackBerry functions such as e-mail and organiser functions. The company says it plans to add them in February 2012.
September 6: A second activist shareholder asks the board to wrest control from Lazaridis and Balsillie and consider RIM putting itself up for sale or spinning off units.
October 10-13: Millions of BlackBerry users on five continents are left without e-mail, internet and instant messaging service by a massive failure of RIM’s infrastructure.
January 22, 2012: RIM says Lazaridis and Balsillie are stepping down from their shared roles as chief executives and chairmen roles they share. The company appoints Thorstein Heins as CEO and Barbara Stymiest as chair of the board.
March 29, 2012: Heins promises a strategic overhaul as RIM reports a slump in BlackBerry shipments and says RIM will no longer issue financial forecasts.
May 29: RIM says it has hired bankers to assist with a strategic review and warns that it will likely report a fiscal first-quarter operating loss.
June 28, 2012: RIM delays BlackBerry 10 again, putting off the launch to early 2013.
January 30, 2013: Heins formally unveils the BlackBerry 10 and Heins announces that the company is changing its name to BlackBerry.
August 12: BlackBerry said it had set up a committee to review its options, including a piece-by-piece sell-off.

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