When all that the mobile phone could grow into was a clunky ‘communicator’ that the bosses carried to meetings, there quietly came a device that looked more inspired by the Palm than anything else. It didn’t quite fit your palm but was slimmer by mobile phone standards those days.
It was the honchos who first got to flaunt their pricey BlackBerrys. Others could only sneak furtive glances at this unusual phone that did zippy emails and Internet on the go. The adulation soon gave way to resentment—it was turning the boss into a 24x7 mean machine that shot off orders in the dead of the night or from some sunny locale in Europe. Why, sometimes you wondered, if the man was indeed holed up in a ‘big deal’ meeting, the emails checking on what you were up to, simply wouldn’t stop.
Then you could stand it no more. You went ahead and bought one of these devices for yourself. Well, most likely, you were given one by the company. You were now part of a hapless, yet curiously empowered, breed of 55 million BlackBerry subscribers who cannot imagine how mankind ever existed without it.
A far cry from the corporate status symbol it’s become, the BlackBerry was created by 23-year-old Greek-Turkish college dropout named Mike Lazaridis, working out of a one-room tech startup in Waterloo, Canada.
In the decade since its formal launch in 1999, it has helped spawn a generation of what’s commonly known as smartphones and the behaviours that go with them.
Its unique BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) service has everyone who’s someone—from US President Barack Obama to movie stars in Hollywood and our own Bollywood—hooked and fiercely loyal. That’s 33 million of them worldwide, with 2,000 joining the ranks every hour. The US government, at 500,000 subscribers, is said to be the biggest customer for Research in Motion (RIM), the company that Lazaridis now runs with co-CEO Jim Balsillie.
The BlackBerry officially came into India in October 2004. Though the country is said to account for barely 2% of RIM’s customers worldwide, it’s hard to miss a BlackBerry owner in the corridors of India Inc. Slouched and gazing intently into its resplendent screen as if waiting for a missive from the heavens, he/she will appear considerably busier than thou.
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