Recognizing the 21st
Century Inventors II
Still on the invention of cellular phone,
smartphone is an improvement on cellular phone, which makes it more versatile
with several functions. What is smartphone? Oxford dictionary describes a
smartphone as “a mobile phone that performs many of the functions of a
computer, typically having a touchscreen interface, Internet access, and an
operating system capable of running downloaded apps”. Thus, the debut of smartphone
completely transformed cellular phone to mini – palmtop mobile computer with
all the capabilities of desktop system. BlackBerry
was the first king of smartphones up to 2007 when Apple launched the touchscreen-only
iPhone and then no one could favorably compete with iPhone. Who are the people
or inventors of BlackBerry, Apple and Android operation systems, responsible
for making the so-called smartphones what they are today?
As one of the pioneer smartphones, BlackBerry
was originally designed and marketed by Canadian company BlackBerry Limited
(formerly known as Research In Motion, or RIM). BlackBerry was one of the most
prominent smartphone vendors in the world, specializing in secured
communications and mobile productivity, and well known for the keyboards on
most of its devices. At its peak in September 2013, Wikipedia recorded that
BlackBerry had 85 million subscribers worldwide. However, BlackBerry has since
lost its dominant position in the market due to the success of the Android and
iOS platforms. Thus, the number of subscribers nose – dive to 23
million in March 2016, which had further gone down to less than five million
subscribers currently.
A Canadian company, named Research in
Motion (RIM) was the owners and developers of the BlackBerry operation system (OS)
in 1984. Mike Lazardis who was then 23 years old and Douglas Fregin founded RIM.
At the time of developing the RIM OS, mobile phones were just a mere dream for ordinary
people. Initially, the ambition of RIM was the creation of pagers that made the
founders of RIM partner with a number of industry players and one of such was
Ericsson. The two firms worked together to develop the technology that would
eventually be used in pagers and wireless payment processing systems. RIM’s
agreement with Ericsson’s Mobitex wireless network allowed RIM to create pagers
in North America that operated as a two-way communicators, which was an
advanced concept at the time, as cellular networks didn’t do data at that time.
Consequently, RIM became the first wireless data technology developer in North
America and the first company to develop connectivity products for Mobitex
wireless packet-switched data communications networks. The services became
popular with military and police forces, firefighters and ambulance services around
the world. This initial success attracted the attention of a Harvard graduate, Jim
Balsillie who was then 33 years old, mortgaged his personal house to raise
money, which he invested a princely sum of $250,000 into RIM in 1992. RIM went
public on the Toronto Stock Exchange in 1997 and in 1998 it released the RIM
950, a dramatically slimmed down two-way pager. Then in 1999, it received United
States of America approval to begin selling its first BlackBerry device, the
850, with mobile email. At that time, message through email was gaining popularity
in USA and thus, BlackBerry gained a huge market share in the mobile industry
by concentrating on email services. It also began to offer email services on
non-BlackBerry devices, such as the Palm Treo, via its proprietary BlackBerry
Connect software.
The September 11, terror attack of 2001
attracted unprecedented market for BlackBerry as effective and efficient email
machine on motion. This made American government to become BlackBerry’s biggest
customer with the purchase over half a million of the devices. In 2002, BlackBerry
5810 was released, which added voice-calling capabilities to the device, and
new devices were unveiled with a colour screen, as the number of users
skyrocketed. By 2005 RIM had four million subscribers, and Balsillie and
Lazaridis were named among Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the
World. In 2006, RIM began to look beyond the enterprise market and adopted a
market demand strategy, which led to the release of the first in a line of
consumer-friendly Pearl devices, adding a digital camera and multimedia
capabilities. The success of this strategy was amazing as RIM recorded over 10
million subscribers in 2007. In the same year, RIM released the first of its
Curve BlackBerry handsets. The popularity of BlackBerry reached its climax with
the visit of Queen Elizabeth II to BlackBerry’s headquarters in 2010. The Queen
was said to be a long-standing fan of the BlackBerry ever since the Duke of
York, Prince Andrew first introduced her to the handsets back in 2007.The Queen
toured the Canadian headquarters of BlackBerry, she was presented with a personalized
BlackBerry Bold 9700, depicting an image of school children offering her
flowers. The handset was presented to the Queen by company co-founder Mike
Lazaridis, as she toured the Ontario factory where the devices are made.
According to media report, it was the first time that the media were allowed to
enter RIM’s work-floor. The RIM factory was a spacious, white floor dotted with
spotless workstations and large automated machines. The Queen and her
entourage, inclusive of a red-clad Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer, were
made to don protective smocks to guard the equipment against electrostatic
shocks. The BlackBerry continued to enjoy unparalleled success as a famous
smartphone until iPhone and Google gave her a steep competition that marked her
waterloo. Many factors contributed, for instance, while all the tumult and
furious evolution was happening on the iPhone and Android fronts, BlackBerry
was more concerned with protecting what it had already acquired, tens of
millions subscribers instead of conquering new grounds for gaining 100s of
millions in the open market. This made BlackBerry fell from grace to grass to
the benefits of iPhone and Android. Yours sincerely was among the deep-rooted lovers
of BB until the reality shifted me to iPhone. This is the story of BB, the
first telephonic device that marvelously took the World by the storm and
revolutionized the communication industry. Which was the next phone after BB in
the canniest game of smartphones? However, before the debut of BB as a
smartphone, there were sporadic efforts across the globe, a kind of “Smartphone
Mania Spreads From East to West” as described by an online newspaper “ThoughCo”
(https://www.thoughtco.com/history-of-smartphones). In 1999 for instance, in Japan, an
impressive smartphone ecosystem was developed by local telecom NTT DoCoMo that launched
a series of handsets linked to a high-speed Internet network called i-mode. Within
two years, the NTT DoCoMo network had an estimated 40 million subscribers.
Before then, in 1996, Nokia 9000 communicator was launched as the first notable
effort to integrate Internet service with GSM cellular service.
Well, to some people, despite all the
concerted efforts made by different people in different climes, the shrewdest
game of smartphones, a so-called “smartphone revolution” didn’t start until 2007,
when Steve Jobs launched the first iPhone.
Previous phones relied on keypads and could only navigate a watered-down
version of the Internet. The iPhone’s large touchscreen could navigate through
websites just like a desktop computer but with higher efficiency and dexterity,
while appearing silkier and portable than anything cellular market had ever
witnessed before. In 2007, at a heavily-hyped press event in San Francisco,
Apple co-founder Steve Jobs stood on stage and unveiled a revolutionary product
that not only broke the mold but also set an entirely new paradigm for
computer-based phones. The look, interface and core functionality of nearly
every smartphone to come along since is in some form or another derived from the
original iPhone’s innovative touchscreen-centric design.
Among some of the groundbreaking features
was an expansive and responsive display from which to check email, stream
video, play audio and browse the Internet with a mobile browser that loaded
full websites much like what’s experienced on personal computers. Apple’s
unique iOS operating system allowed for a wide range of intuitive gesture-based
commands and eventually a rapidly growing warehouse of downloadable third-party
applications. Most importantly, the
iPhone recreated people’s relationship with smartphones. Up to then, smartphones
were generally oriented toward businesspeople as an invaluable tool for staying
organized, corresponding over email and boosting their productivity and smartphones
fans who used them symbol of high class in the society. Apple’s version took it
to a whole hog reaching a higher level as a full-blown multimedia powerhouse,
enabling users to play games, watch movies, chat, share content and stay
connected to all the possibilities that the World is still constantly
rediscovering. What is the current level of iPhone in the canniest game of
smartphones? Who is giving iPhone a steep competition and value for money to
the customers? (To be continued next week?
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