BlackBerry Planet is a new tribe of people who simply cannot get along without their favorite device, Research in Motion’s innovative electronic organizer, the BlackBerry. This omnipresent device has gone beyond being the world’s foremost mobile business tool and entered the consumer mainstream as the Swiss Army Knife of smart phones.

BlackBerry Planet tells the behind-the-scenes story of how this little device has become the machine that connects the planet. Starting with the early years of Mike Lazaridis’ invention and his founding of RIM at age 23, it details his drive to innovate, developing what was a glorified pager into the essential corporate communicator, used by everyone from dealmakers to the Queen, from movie stars to the entire US Congress. Since 1992, Lazaridis and co-CEO Jim Balsillie together have been the driving force behind the RIM story.

With access to senior staffers and former RIM employees, BlackBerry Planet tells the inside story about the branding and marketing success of the BlackBerry, from its use during 9/11, which earned RIM a reputation for security and reliability, to the cultural adoption of the iconic device as a must-have symbol, to the backlash against the addictive properties of the “CrackBerry,” and the various patent suits RIM has had to fight off – including the five-year court battle that resulted in the largest technology patent settlement in US history.

As the incredible story of the BlackBerry unfolds, and as RIM battles global giants like Nokia and Apple in the emerging super-phone marketplace, users, fans, investors and competitors can look to BlackBerry Planet for the insight and context of where they’ve been, to try and predict where they’re going.

BlackBerry Planet: The Story of Research in Motion and the Little Device that Took the World by Storm (Wiley)

Features

• ISBN13: 9780470159408
• Condition: New
• Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed

User Reviews

the book details the interesting story of RIM and how it started. I needed the book to find out about RIM's marketing strategies and it contained it as well as many other things. Also has a lot of cool facts like Obama's high score on BrickBreaker. -- very informative, very interesting

Good overview of the company history, the key players, and a chronology of how RIM developed the Blackberry product. The book is not technical and I wish the author dedicated some pages to the infrastructure pieces, as I still have a poor understanding of all the BIS/BES moving components which define the Blackberry service. Other then that, Alastair Sweeney did a great job of covering the NTP lawsuit and the early history. If you're interested in the mobile space, it's a worthwhile investment - pick it up & scan the middle chapters.

-- Crackberry story

The good news is that chapter 2 was interesting and good and shows that the author has potential writing skills. The bad news is that chapter 1 was total drivel like obama likes his blackberry a lot and a lot of people use it. The rest of the book was boring and lacked any substantial real information.
Unfortunately I would recommend that others spare themselves the agony of reading it. -- boring drivel

I liked this book because it gave me an insight into the history of RIM (the company that develops and markets the Blackberry). My favorite parts were chapters 2 (birth of ..), 3 (lawsuits ...) and 4 (brand to icon ...). If you are interested in the mobile technology space, especially in anything related to the smartphone, then you must read this book.

Parts of the book were a bit of a drag, and the author appears to be a little too biased in favor of the Blackberry. Nevertheless, the book is worth the $17 I paid for it. It was a quick read and I finished reading it in less than 4 hours. -- Blackberry Planet: a must-read for mobile industry folks

Tags: addictive-properties, business-tool, ceo-jim, consumer-mainstream, corporate-communicator, electronic-organizer, global-giants, mike-lazaridis, mobile-business, movie-stars, new-tribe, patent-suits, smart-phones, technology-patent, us-congress

This entry was posted on Friday, March 5th, 2010 at 9:43 am and is filed under Blackberry articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.