BlackBerry(2023)

Plot Summary

• The world is moving towards satellite communication and handheld devices that make instant communication possible since the 1980s.In Waterloo, 1996, Research in Motion (RIM) CEO Mike Lazaridis (Jay Baruchel) and his best friend and co-founder Douglas Fregin (Matt Johnson) prepare to pitch their "PocketLink" cellular device to businessman Jim Balsillie (Glenn Howerton). Lazaridis is bothered by the buzzing of Balsillie's China-manufactured intercom and fixes it before Balsillie arrives to the meeting. RIM creates computer hardware systems using custom designed integrated circuits as well as off the shelf components. They plan to piggyback on the unused bandwidth of the UHF spectrum to create an all-in-one mobile device. There is a free wireless internet signal all over North America and nobody has figured out how to use it. A cell phone, a pager and an email, all in one handheld device. Their pitch is unsuccessful, but after Balsillie is fired from his job, by his boss Rick Brock (Martin Donovan) due to his aggressive ambition, he agrees to work with them if he is made CEO of RIM and given one half of the company. They hesitate, but after confirming Basillie's suspicion that their deal with US Robotics was a malicious attempt to bankrupt them, they bring Balsillie in as co-CEO with one third of RIM for a cash infusion (of $125,000). Balsillie had correctly speculated that US Robotics had no intention on paying RIM on their $16 million deal for modems. They are planning to withhold payment till the last moment, to make RIM go bankrupt. When Mike calls US Robotics, they say that they canceled the order on fax months ago (RIM did not have a fax machine). Mike overrules Fregin's reluctance about Basillie and brings him on.RIM has a totally casual office culture, with a collection of nerds as their employees. Mike is a dropout boy genius who studied with Steve Jobs. The company play video games during work and have emergency movie nights for team bonding. Balsillie finds that Mike spent $1.6 million in parts and labor to build the modems for US Robotics. He took a loan from the Bank of Montreal to fund this. US Robotics agrees to take the modems for $1.6 million but want the patent to Mike's phone. RIM's accounts with the bank were overdrawn, even after the cash infusion from Balsillie. So, he mortgages his own home to put more money into RIM to keep the company afloat. He hires Shelly as his PA.Balsillie arranges a pitch for the PocketLink with Bell Atlantic CEO John Woodman (Saul Rubinek) and forces Fregin and Lazaridis to build a crude prototype overnight, which he and Lazaridis take to New York. Fregin was dead against building the prototype, as the nerds wanted to build something that was perfect. Balsillie on the other hand knew that perfect was the enemy of profitability. Mike and Fregin build the prototype after Balsillie tells them that the meeting with Woodman is set for the following day. Fregin was not invited to the meeting. Lazaridis forgets the prototype in their taxi, leaving Balsillie to attempt the pitch alone. Lazaridis recovers the prototype at the last second and finishes the pitch, and they re-brand the PocketLink as the "BlackBerry", which becomes massively successful. Mike reckoned that the networks could support 0.5 million devices simultaneously with their communications protocols.By 2003, Mike and Fregin design the BlackBerry Messenger service on their device. This means unlimited free texting on BlackBerry (as they work on data) and network text messages cost 10 cents per unit. In 2003, Palm CEO Carl Yankowski (Cary Elwes) plans a hostile takeover of the immensely successful RIM (as their market cap is only $45 Billion), forcing Balsillie to try to raise RIM's stock price by selling more phones than Bell Atlantic's (now Verizon Communications) network can support. This crashes the network, as Lazaridis had warned, so Balsillie poaches engineers (Including Paul Stanos (Rich Sommer) from Google) from around the world to fix the problem (the problem was that the phones were using too much data, and to increase the network carrying capacity, one way to reduce the data usage. Fregin's team was not capable of doing this) as well as hiring a man named Charles Purdy (Michael Ironside) as RIM's COO to keep the engineers in line, though this upsets Fregin, who values the casual and fun work environment he and Lazaridis had created. The new engineers fix the network issue under Purdy's strict management, and RIM avoids Yankowski's buyout.In 2007, RIM's upcoming pitch of the BlackBerry Bold to Verizon is thrown into chaos when Steve Jobs announces the iPhone. Balsillie, a hockey fan with a long-term ambition of owning an NHL team, is occupied with trying to purchase the Pittsburgh Penguins (an ice hockey team and Balsillie is a fan), forcing Lazaridis to pitch the Bold with Fregin instead. When it goes poorly, he panics and impulsively promises them the "Storm", a BlackBerry with a touchscreen. As he finally agrees with Purdy's suggestion to outsource the labor of the Storm to China, Mike insults Fregin during an argument and calls him useless. Fregin later quits RIM as a result.Balsillie becomes nervous when he sees the iPhone's projected sales and tries to arrange a meeting with AT&T's CEO, only to learn that the Penguins sale is being finalized that day. He prioritizes the Penguins but is rejected when the NHL owners reveal knowledge of his plan to move the team to Hamilton, which they learned of through his boasting to Yankowski (Balsillie wanted to rub it in Yankowski's face as he knew that Yankowski hated ice hockey and offered him free tickets to the Penguins game in Hamilton)The US SEC raid RIM after learning that Balsillie hired the engineers in 2003 with illegally backdated stock options, threatening Lazaridis with legal action. Balsillie misses his chance to meet with AT&T's CEO, who snubs Balsillie by hinting that AT&T's partnership with Apple is predicated on the fact that data usage has superseded phone minutes as a priority. Balsillie returns to RIM to find that Lazaridis has exposed him to the SEC, leaving Lazaridis as the sole CEO of RIM.One year later, the Storms arrive from China, but Lazaridis finds them to be laden with bugs and can hear buzzing when he holds one to his ear. As he begins manually fixing the buzzing phones one by one, the closing titles reveal that: the Storms were almost universally inoperable, and Verizon sued RIM to cover the financial loss. Lazaridis resigned as CEO in 2012, Balsillie avoided jail, and Fregin became one of the richest men in the world by selling his stock in 2007. At the height of its success, the BlackBerry phone made up 45% of the cell phone market and is now 0% in the present day, with BlackBerry phones no longer being produced.

Storyline

• 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.