Overview

Winner of the National Business Book Award and #1 National Bestseller Losing the Signal is the riveting untold story of how BlackBerry engineered one of the most spectacular technological upsets of the twenty-first century before it lost its way in the fog of smartphone wars, management indecision, and the breakdown of one of the most successful partnerships in the history of Canadian business. Its rise and fall is a cautionary tale of the unrelenting speed of modern success and failure. At the heart of the story are two mismatched co-CEOs--Mike Lazaridis, a bookish innovator, and Jim Balsillie, an aggressive entrepreneur--who grew their company from humble beginnings above a bagel store in Waterloo, Ontario. Harnessing innovation and sharp-elbowed tactics, BlackBerry's bosses outsmarted powerful international competitors and built a global business in a little more than a decade with an addictive phone that changed the way we communicated. BlackBerry's devices were so ubiquitous that even President Barack Obama favoured them above all others. Just as BlackBerry was emerging as the dominant global player, internal fault lines hobbled the company at the very moment its smartphone crown was challenged by stronger competitors: Apple, Google and Samsung. When the Canadian company finally made its move, it stumbled with delayed, poorly designed and unpopular handheld devices that took it out of the race. Only fifteen years after the BlackBerry was launched, the company is struggling to survive. Its share of the U.S. phone market fell from fifty per cent in 2009 to less than one percent by the end of 2014. Written by veteran journalists Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff, Losing the Signal is an enduring study of a technology that defined a generation, in a ferocious industry that leaves little margin for error.

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9781443436199

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Reviews

Losing the Signal tells of the marriage and divorce of Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, how two opposites built RIM into a world-beater and how they lost it. This is first-class reporting that reads like a juicy novel, with one amazing story after another. A terrific book. --Howard Green, author of Banking on America

Author Information

"JACQUIE MCNISH is a senior writer with the ""Globe and Mail"" and before that the ""Wall Street Journal."" She has won seven National Newspaper Awards and is the author of three best-selling books, two of which won the National Business Book award. She lives in Toronto with her husband and two sons. SEAN SILCOFF is a business writer with the"" Globe and Mail"" and a two-time National Newspaper Award winner. He lives near Ottawa with his wife and three children."

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