Monthly Archive: July 2010

Monday morning I’m on CBC’s national affairs show The Current in debate with blogger and investor Eric Jackson about the future of Research In Motion. Jackson describes RIM as GRIM. As far as he’s concerned, RIM’s best days are behind it and the company hasn’t kept up with the competition. The announcement by RIM and AT&T expected in New York on Tuesday does not impress this gloomster. If the “slider” that’s expected is anything like the photos that have leaked, then the device will be a dud, he says. Oh, BTW, Jackson is shorting the stock. I don’t much like...

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Great review by Roopinder Singh in The Tribune of India. Here’s the link.

Nice piece in yesterday’s Halifax Chronicle-Herald on my new book. Here’s the link.

Just received my copy of the British edition of BlackBerry: The Inside Story of Research in Motion. Published last month by Aurum Press, it is a handsome product with a cover slightly altered from the version available in Canada and the United States. Aurum used a photo of a different model of the BlackBerry and made some of the words “pop” nicely on the front cover and the spine. On the outside back cover, they replaced the photo of the co-CEOs, Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, with a generic shot of a young person lying on the ground with backpack...

Everything was in white for the Queen’s visit to Research In Motion yesterday: a white lab coat for the 30-minute plant tour on the aptly named Phillip Street and white gloves on Her Majesty’s hands to receive the white BlackBerry given as a gift. Even the Porter Airlines aircraft that flew Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip to the local airport was white. The Queen was welcomed by thousands of local residents, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty and other politicians, as well as Mike Lazaridis, RIM co-CEO and co-founder, who invited his parents, Dorothy and Mike, to the occasion. The Queen even...

Ken McGuffin, manager of media relations at the Rotman School of Management, emailed me today to say that he’s in Mumbai and saw my BlackBerry book on the shelves in the several bookstores he visited. “Unfortunately,” he quipped, “you’re not a hit here until the guy on the sidewalk selling the counterfeit books is selling it as well.” I take his point. BlackBerry is about to go on sale in China. I have this nightmare that one copy is sold and then the rest are pirated. In fact, such activity is already happening right here in North America. There’s a...