Losing the Signal

The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry

By: Jacquie McNish, Sean Silcoff

Narrated by: William Hughes

In 2009, BlackBerry controlled half of the smartphone market. Today that number is one percent. What went so wrong?

Losing the Signal is a riveting story of a company that toppled global giants before succumbing to the ruthlessly competitive forces of Silicon Valley. This is not a conventional tale of modern business failure by fraud and greed. The rise and fall of BlackBerry reveals the dangerous speed at which innovators race along the information superhighway.

With unprecedented access to key players, senior executives, directors, and competitors, Losing the Signal unveils the remarkable rise of a company that started above a bagel shop in Ontario. At the heart of the story is an unlikely partnership between a visionary engineer, Mike Lazaridis, and an abrasive Harvard Business School grad, Jim Balsillie. Together they engineered a pioneering pocket email device that became the tool of choice for presidents and CEOs. The partnership enjoyed only a brief moment on top of the world, however. At the very moment BlackBerry was ranked the world's fastest-growing company, internal feuds and chaotic growth crippled the company as it faced its gravest test: Apple and Google's entry into mobile phones.

Expertly told by acclaimed journalists Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff, this is an entertaining, whirlwind narrative that goes behind the scenes to reveal one of the most compelling business stories of the new century.

©2015 Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff (P)2015 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

interesting

well written cautionary tale, both of how difficult it is for a small technology company to get to the top and how difficult it is to change course once it is large.

The fall of a once great company!

I liked how they came to be a major player and innovator in the smart phone game! Also how holding on to the past ultimately took them down.

Compelling

I'm not sure what it was, but I found myself listening to this book even on 2 minute walks to the shops. Maybe there's an element of celebrity schadenfreude. Or maybe it was an underdog story. Or both. This will probably turn out to be a footnote in history, but it's quite a good snapshot of a little period which changed communication. Interesting characters too. Who knows how interesting you will find it, but I enjoyed it.

An Important Cautionary Tale

Even if all you know or can remember is iPhone or Android, this is an important cautionary tale. I still carry a BlackBerry (although I have been warned by my IT folks its days are numbered), and well remember when it made the Palm Pilot obsolete and was "the" must-have device.

The lessons to be learned:

1. Having co-CEOs is probably a bad idea.

2. Putting all your eggs in one basket is probably a bad idea unless you have IP or a technical advantage that keeps others out.

3. Treat your business partners well. If you abuse them on the way up, don't expect them to be there for you on the way down.

4. Never underestimate disruptive technology, especially if it is from Apple.

5. Never neglect your core audience.

6. Never put your prospects in the hands of products that are not ready for prime time.

All of these lessons are told in a compelling story that chronicles both the rise and the fall of BlackBerry. The story is well-written and moves well.

Highly recommended.

all secrets revealed.

everyone thinks they know why blackberry lost its #1 slot. here all real facts are revealed.

Great story of a once great company

Riveting Indepth story of the rise and fall of blackberry. This book goes into immense detail about the company and its founders and had me interested right until the end. A great tale

love it

fair and impartial. well written. also points out they can come back and probably will

Amazing detail and drama

Very compelling. A lot of detail woven into the fabric of the history of RIM. I liked the intensely human aspect of it.

Sadly, more focused on the timeline than the trends

Sol off and McNish do a nice job of walking the listener through the timeline of RIM's rise and fall. Unfortunately the authors don't delve deeply into the underlying jobs to be done by smartphones, and how those jobs changes in, and then out of, RIM's favor.

Great for us IT guys!

interesting read for those of us who lived and worked in IT through these events.