Mike Lazaridis, creator of the BlackBerry, is well aware of the marital tensions his invention can arouse.


As president and co-chief executive of Research in Motion (RIM), the company behind the device, he admits to taking a holiday "occasionally" but says there are fewer and fewer places to go that don't have BlackBerry coverage. "It's good for me," he smiles. "My wife doesn't like it."

Mrs Lazaridis is just one of a growing army of partners infuriated by the endless glances downwards and the always-on-call culture the BlackBerry has facilitated.

There are more than 11 million users worldwide and the device has dramatically changed the future of communications. Everyone from investment banks to the police force and governments now use BlackBerries, largely because of the simplicity of the system and the level of security it offers.

Lazaridis admits that the popularity of the device surprised even him. "I think what was really amazing was how valuable the BlackBerry application is to corporations. They talk about it as becoming mission critical."

He recalls the first BlackBerry outage in two years with a hint of pride. "It made national, headline news. The White House started its day by saying, 'Sorry, we don't have our act together yet because BlackBerry is down'.

Everyone has become so reliant on this instant communication to their hand, that when it goes down it's like oxygen being removed from the room. People take it for granted and we all thrive on it and we all deep down know we can't live without it but we never expect it to be cut off.

Any BlackBerry addict – the device has earned the nickname "CrackBerry" for its obsessive nature – will attest that this is not just the wild enthusiasm of an over-zealous inventor. The question is: how will the BlackBerry fare when email becomes standard on all mobile phones?

This year has seen the launch of Apple's iPhone, which dramatically improved the experience of accessing the internet from a mobile with its touch screen and simple, picture-based interface.

Lazaridis accepts that the iPhone has had a hand in reshaping the market. "With the success of BlackBerry and all the Apple hype, you've gone to a point where consumers are saying, 'You mean I can do more with my phone?' It's accelerated the eventual and inevitable drive of all feature phones becoming smart phones in the future."

But he is dismissive of the phone itself. "We've had touch screens forever and they didn't really catch on," he says. "I think [Apple] did what they do best extremely well: the multimedia experience.

"It's sort of like a car: if you put a V12 engine in it and super-charge it, you end up getting what appears to be superior performance. The problem is that you've got to take it to the petrol station every day. So it's a trade- off between performance, battery life and cost. Sure, they get a real snappy [user interface] – and I think the industry will very quickly catch up to that – but the cost is that your battery drains."

Lazaridis also takes comfort in the fact that Apple is going after the consumer market. RIM, he insists, is not – rather consumers are coming to it.

"There's enough people using BlackBerries now where they are issued by the company, that they get first-hand experience of how valuable and how useful the thing is," he says.

"Then when they go to the store and they see 'Wow. It's affordable, it's stylish, there's all kinds of data plans now' and they say 'I think I'll get this for myself'.

"You know how you associate a high-end car brand with business and yet we all aspire to it if we could afford it as a consumer? The BlackBerry has passed the point where it's affordable."

It is debatable which came first: consumer demand or the BlackBerry Pearl - RIM's first device that looked like a phone, had a camera and multi-media player. Lazaridis' point, however, seems to be that RIM cannot, and therefore will not compete with the likes of Apple, Nokia, Sony Ericsson.

"We're going after the enterprise customer," he says. " That's an area where there's a high barrier to entry for competitors. It's an area where we can innovate and where we have a huge lead. So we're going to keep investing in that space because it's an area where there's huge growth, even if we didn't have all the consumer, aspirational buys that are occurring.

"Our belief is that really everyone should have a BlackBerry. It should be just like you get a laptop or phone on your desk, or desk for that matter. It should be standard issue."

Sadly for the BlackBerry widows of the world, this plucky, niche player is well on its way to achieving that goal.

BlackBerry Info Posted Date:	Oct 2007
BlackBerry Info Operating System(s) referred to:	OSX
BlackBerry Info Article Catagory:	Views
BlackBerry Info Article Category Specific Details:	Apple iPhone