2 Dropouts Man Successful Making Smartphones With The Most Sales In The World | BlackBerry (2023)

2 Dropouts Man Successful Making Smartphones With The Most Sales In The World. In nineteen ninety-six, two young men visited a company. They are Mike and Doug. These two were geniuses that got dropped out of college. After getting dropped out, both ended up founding a company called Research in Motion or RIM, a company focusing on telecommunication.

BlackBerry (2023)

But unfortunately, the company was struggling since it was just founded. One of the products that they were proud of was a modem they developed, but again it was a shame that until then there were still no big companies that wanted to buy or fund its development. Mike and Doug went to a company named Sutherland Schultz or SS. They came to offer their latest product called Pocket Link, a cell phone that can be connected to the Internet and can also receive and send email.

At that time, cell phones like Motorola and Ericsson already existed. The innovation of cell phones that could connect to the Internet was developed only by pocket Link. Sadly, during their visit to the SS, they were completely ignored by Jim, one of the officials of the company. After that, they then returned to their office which was filled with young geeks who liked to play games and preferred watching movies together rather than raising the company.

Because of their lack of seriousness. On the other hand, Jim is the head of marketing for the s company. That day, he was making a presentation in front of the company owners and potential investors. He was finally fired from the company after his controversial suggestion to embezzle their tax money.

But Mike was busy thinking about a replacement name for Pocket Link and all the employees were busy playing games. Jim suddenly came to the company and without much ado, he immediately made a negotiation with the CEO of RIM, Mike and Doug, saying that he would help to develop their company and make it big. He even willingly resigned from his position and soon if they appointed him as the CEO. Both were surprised to hear that, but they immediately refused.

Doug loudly refused by showing off their modem sales agreement with US Robotics company, whose total deal was sixteen million dollars. But Jim, who already has experience in the business world, after explaining that US Robotics hasn't paid a single penny to them, told them that the agreement was far from an official deal. He then said that for US Robotics. To seal the agreement with them, they had to pay at least some percentage of the total deal to them, but even after that explanation, Mike and Doug were still hard on their stances.

Jim then offered to invest as much as twenty thousand dollars in their company if he were given fifty percent ownership shares, and he would give the cash that very day, but because Doug was still stubborn, he didn't want to share the shares, while Mike was confused. The negotiations finally ended without any agreement made. After that, Mike tried to contact US Robotics to ask for an initial payment before the modem was mass-produced and shipped. However, the company apparently canceled the deal and had already informed them about it three months ago via fax. Stanley, because Mike's office didn't have a fax machine, he wasn't informed about the cancelation.

Unfortunately, they already produced hundreds of modems using money that they borrowed from the bank, as much as one million dollars. Doug and Mike panicked after what happened. They couldn't know what to do with that much modem or how to pay their debt to the bank. Knowing they had no choice, they finally agreed to contact Jim and offered him a condition where he had to invest as much as one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars for thirty-three percent shares of the company.

Fortunately, Jim agreed with the agreement. Sure deal, Awesome, Awesome. The next day, Jim went to Mike and Doug's office without much ado. He immediately asked how much money they had spent on modem production.

After Mike said that they had spent one point six million dollars and US Robotics canceled the purchase agreement, Jim immediately called the company and threatened to sell those modems to other companies at a cheap price that could lead to severe loss to US Robotics. The company finally agreed to pay, but with the condition that Mike had to hand over the license for Pocket Link. Hearing those words, Jim immediately hung up the call. Jim asked Mike to explain about pocket Link to him because he couldn't remember their presentation during their visit to the company.

After being explained by Mike at length, Jim ordered everyone to finish the pocket Link Crewe prototype that very day because he would bring Mike to New York to look for even bigger investors. By the next day, Mike Doug and his team started to make the prototype from scratch. They bought a calculator, handheld gaming device, cell phone, or anything that had a screen big enough for their prototype and had a keyboard that was able to type typing with a computer keyboard, Mike dub and his team started to make the prototype from scratch. After working all night, all of them finally managed to finish the prototype by the morning.

The next morning, Jim immediately came to pick up Mike. He didn't want to bring Dob because he wasn't professional at all. They went straight to the airport to catch their flight. On the way, Jim finally admitted that he had been fired from the s company and that if the project failed, he was completely devastated because he had mortgaged his house to finance the company, so Jim wanted Mike to be serious.

They finally arrived at a company called Bell Atlantic, a company that focused on telecommunications. When they were about to do a presentation, they realized that the prototype was left behind in the taxi Mike really panicked, and Jim was furious because he didn't want everything to be messed up. Jim then asked Mike to sketch the presentation, but Mike chose to go look for the prototype that was left behind in the taxi instead. Because the company officials had gathered, Jim was forced to do the presentation alone.

Thankfully, because he already had experience in the business world, Jim easily controlled the situation. He used the sentence that Mike and Doe used when they first came to meet him at the s company, he emphasized the word computer inside his cell phone. Instead of getting a good response, the company boss just laughed at the presentation given by Jim because they had tried the innovation many times but never succeeded. Thanks to that response, Jim started to lose his composure because he really didn't understand the prototype itself.

When Jim didn't know what to say anymore, Mike suddenly showed up with the prototype. He was initially prohibited from entering the meeting room because the meeting was over, but when Mike said that the company was using the wrong method to make the innovation work, he was finally allowed to give his presentation, Mike gave the idea that Bell Atlantic should make a giant server. The server then will accommodate all messages and emails and will send them to the customer, so the server acts as an intermediary instead of sharing a shared network. He then showed the pocket Link prototype that could easily be connected directly to the company's network and was proven to be able to send emails.

The Boss finally agreed to invest in the rim company, and Pocket Link officially changed its name to BlackBerry. Long story short. In two thousand three, the company finally became successful with its BlackBerry products. The leadership was still held by Jim as head of marketing, Doug as the chief engineer, and Mike as the innovator.

Over time, Mike sparked the latest idea, namely BBM or BlackBerry Messenger, a special short message feature only for fellow BlackBerry users making BlackBerry truly in demand by all Canadians. After that, Jim asked Mike, Doug, and his team to produce more devices. He targeted five hundred thousand units, even a million if possible because he wanted to market BlackBerry outside Canada. Since BlackBerry depended on the network in Canada, the network couldn't cover the network of more than five hundred thousand units.

Jim finally decided to go to one of Google's engineering heads and without further ado, asked him to leave Google and join RIM. Jim offered a payment of one million dollars, but the man refused. Jim hadn't given up yet. He increased the bid again to ten million dollars while showing official papers that the RIM company had been registered as a company and you would give ten million dollars to the engineer in the form of shares.

Upon hearing that and reading the papers, he finally agreed to join RIM. How are you doing, Welcome? Where are you coming from? Google? Nice? After that, Jim assigned one of the RIM employees to work as a marketing for the elite. He asked the man to join the elite bars, clubs, and groups in order to convince rich people to use their products. Since he had a convincing like a wealthy businessman, people in nightclubs and elite bars began to put their interest in BlackBerry and started making purchases.

Since then, the image of BlackBerry was created as a classy cell phone owned by rich people. As the company started gaining more fame and success, Jim then recruited Charles Purty as the new Chief Operating Officer or SUO, who was known for being strict and disciplined. At first, Mike was really surprised because Jim suddenly replaced Doug with someone else. After he saw all his employees were just busy playing games and playing around, he finally agreed.

After the arrival of the new CEO, the atmosphere in the factory became more conducive. They started to work discipline under the new leadership. Long story short. In two thousand seven, BlackBerry had dominated half of cell phone sales worldwide and even almost controlled all sales all over the US.

In that year, the Apple Company finally released its first cell phone named iPhone, a smartphone with a touch screen. When they saw the news, all RIM employees were a little worried about this touchscreen innovation. Meanwhile, BlackBerry was still proud of its quarry keypad, and when Mike saw this innovation, he said that only stupid people would want to use his cell phone without a keyboard like the iPhones. After the emergence of the iPhone, BlackBerry began to lose its dominance in the market.

After gaining such success, Jim started to get busy with himself. He started abandoning his job as the CEO of RIM. He became too engrossed with himself and lost his focus on the company's development. He even spent his money buying sports club shares.

He didn't know that BlackBerry had a new rival and was starting to lose in the market. BlackBerry finally released its newest product, namely the BlackBerry Bold. Unfortunately, since Jim was never seen in the office, Mike and Doug were forced to make a presentation of the new product prototype in front of the investors. Mike proudly showed off the trackpad feature he lately just developed and the newly designed keypad that was comfortable to squeeze.

Unfortunately, the investors were no longer excited to hear the presentation. They even compared Mike's product with the iPhone, saying that they were outdated for using keypads on their phones. Somehow, Mike, who didn't want to accept the new innovation, insisted that touchscreen phones wouldn't be in demand in the market, and still insisted that BlackBerry phones with quarty keypads with best the selling phones in the world since they were required to compete with the iPhone. Mike finally gave an innovation, a BlackBerry with a slide screen feature known as the BlackBerry Storm, a touchscreen phone that still has the quarry keypad on it.

He also said that the onscreen keyboards shouldn't have the same clicky sound as the physical keypads. Suddenly, the technicians protested because this innovation was a waste of time. Plus, including physical keypads on a touchscreen phone with an onscreen keyboard was straight nonsense. Mike was really stressed and frustrated.

The Ciguo Charles Purdy finally spoke regarding the new product. He was no longer able to fulfill Mike's wishes. The innovation that Mike provided would only make the job more difficult and a waste of time. He finally decided that BlackBerry Storm would be mass-produced in China because the materials and labor in China were not too difficult to obtain and wouldn't take long.

Mike finally agreed with the idea. Dobb protested the decision because products that were made in China were known to have bad quality, so automatically the quality of the BlackBerry will drop if it is produced there. But Mike, who was already really confused about defending his company, finally lost it and snapped it, Doug, saying that he wasn't helping with the problem for the company and even called him useless. Since that incident, their friendship began to fall apart.

Jim then returned to the office after his trip. When he arrived at his office, his employees showed a sales graft between BlackBerry and iPhone, showing that the iPhone had finally rivaled BlackBerry sales. Without hesitation, Jim said that Mike would be able to find the solution. After that RIM was rated by US Securities and Exchange Commission or SEC.

The officers started searching and interrogating Mike. They wondered why the best technicians in the world were willing to work for that company, and of course, Mike said because his company produces the best cell phones in the world. But apparently, the officer didn't buy it, saying that Jim had hired the engineers with the illegally backdated stock options. They falsified reports on the value of RIM shares.

They were given ten million dollars in shares when the real value of the share was far lower than that value. All the employees who were recruited by Jim were only given a bogus investment in the company. Mike was confused because he didn't know anything. When the officer asked if he was the CEO of that company, Mike wisely said that he was just the vice CEO and that the CEO was Jim, as evidenced by the sequence of signatures from all the company reports where Mike's signature was on the second line after Jim's.

When everything was finally exposed, Mike worked with the SEC to catch Jim. He called Jim to common and said that he had a solution to deal with the problem. Jim then hurried to meet Mike in the office, and as soon as he arrived, Mike immediately contacted the SEC to arrest Jim. After his arrest, he was also fired from all the sports clubs that the shares he bought.

After the incident, Ram was finally freed from all charges after that. In two thousand eight, Rim finally released the BlackBerry Storm, which was produced in China. When they arrived, Mike checked the cell phones randomly and found out that the quality was really bad. The cell phone was buzzing when making a phone call and the touch screen oft and jammed like old Chinese cell phones.

Thanks to the failed products, the BlackBerry Storm was finally returned. Due to that incident, the investor from the Bell Atlantic Company finally sued RIM for five hundred million dollars because of the loss. In twenty-twelve, Mike finally decided to resign from RIM, while Jim was still serving his time in prison for stock manipulation. Meanwhile, Doug finally sold all of his shares in two thousand and seven after the incident with Mike.

It is reported that Doug secretly had become one of the richest people in the world. In the prime time, BlackBerry managed to dominate forty-five percent of mobile phone sales worldwide, but after collapsed, their products were rejected all over the world, leaving them with zero percent of the sales.