Facts you never knew about blackberry LTD

Facts you never knew about blackberry LTD

Last week, blackberry finally summon up courage to announce officially that  it had formed a special committee to explore "strategic alternatives" for itself. The company specifically said that it's trying to "enhance value and increase scale in order to accelerate BlackBerry 10 deployment." However, BlackBerry noted in the release that alternatives could range from joint ventures to partnerships to a sale of its operation to another firm. In other words, the company has just hanged the “for sale” sign round its neck. I will not want to go into detail about the rise and fall of this giant telecommunication and wireless company but would point out some salient points on its transition.

Ø  BlackBerry Limited, formerly known as “Research In Motion Limited (RIM)” is a Canadian telecommunication and wireless equipment company with headquarters in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.

Ø  It was founded by Mike Lazaridis who served as its coCEO along with Jim Balsillie until January, 2012.

Ø  The present CEO of the company is Thorsten Heins.

Ø  The first device introduced by this company was the blackberry 850 introduced in 1999 as a two-way pager

Ø  The name BlackBerry was chosen due to the resemblance of the keyboard's buttons to that of the drupelets that compose the blackberry fruit.

Ø  The first BlackBerry devices aimed towards the consumer market that included multimedia features like camera was the BlackBerry Pearl 8100.

Ø  Their first product to run on the QNX platform was the blackberry playbook which was largely criticize as being rushed to the market in an incomplete state.

Ø  On January 2011, Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie resigned as the CEOs of the company.

Ø  In June 2011, RIM stock fell to its lowest point since 2006, and on December the same year, RIM shares fell to their lowest price since January 2004.

Ø  In July 2011, the company cut 2, 000 jobs, the biggest lay-off in its history and the first major layoff since November 12, 2002 when the company laid off 10% of its workforce (200 employees). The lay-off reduced the workforce by around 11%, from 19, 000 employees to 17, 000.

Ø  From June 2008 to June 2011, RIM's shareholders lost almost $70 billion, or 82 percent, as the company's market capitalization dropped from $83 billion to $13.6 billion, the biggest decline among communications-equipment providers.

Ø  And finally on on August 2012, the company announced  the special board committee that will evaluate all possible options, including joint ventures, partnerships or an outright sale.