The BlackBerry movie, simply titled “BlackBerry,” opens tomorrow at a theater near you starring Glenn Howerton and Jay Baruchel as Research In Motion (BlackBerry’s parent company) co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis respectively. In public, both adopted a “what, me worry?” attitude toward the iPhone with Balsillie saying “As nice as the Apple iPhone is, it poses a real challenge to its users. Try typing a web key on a touchscreen on an Apple iPhone, that’s a real challenge. You cannot see what you type.”
Lazaridis said in 2008, “The most exciting mobile trend is full QWERTY keyboards. I’m sorry, it really is. I’m not making this up.” Yikes.
The BlackBerry story is ultimately about a company that came up with a better mouse trap and was on the tip of every tongue in corporate America. But when the world is at your feet and you’re lauded as trailblazers and geniuses by people who are pretty intelligent themselves, you start to think that you can do no wrong. And this was the mindset of Balsillie and Lazaridis when Jobs introduced the iPhone.
