- [Narrator] It's been nearly a century
since Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone,
but the technology has barely evolved.
- In the 1970s, phones are still wired,
literally, to the wall.
You have a kitchen wall phone,
maybe a phone on your desk or your nightstand.
People are using them in their offices,
but if you wanted to go out,
you're gonna need to look for a payphone.
- It's hard to actually think about what life was like.
- Oh, my goodness.
I don't know how we were able to survive back then.
It was unbelievable.
[tense music]
- [Narrator] Then, one rainy spring day in 1973
in New York City,
engineer Marty Cooper does something revolutionary.
- He is about to make the first cell phone call ever,
in all of human history.
- He gets his phone and he's like, "Who am I gonna call?"
- Why not call my biggest competitor over at AT&T?
- Oh, I'm sorry, my mistake.
- And he calls the wrong damn number.
He calls the wrong number!
- [laughs] It's just, it's crazy.
- [Adam] But you know, to his credit,
he did get it right on the second try.
- It's Marty Cooper.
I'm calling you from the sidewalk.
- This is like earth-shattering, game-changing stuff.
To be able to actually walk around and make a phone call,
unheard of.
- [Narrator] But Marty Cooper isn't the only visionary.
From this one call, a global $500 billion
cell phone industry is born.
- It's insane that there are more cell phones
on planet Earth than there are people.
- And there really, I don't think,
has been another innovation so dramatic
that has transpired so quickly.
- [Narrator] Two rival companies go head-to-head.
- Motorola was the pioneer in the cell phone industry.
- Can we design anything better?
- [Adam] Nothing like the BlackBerry exists.
- This was the challenge of a lifetime.
- They're going to have to do something huge.
- It's a good, old fashioned race to success.
- [Narrator] And push each other
to create the most iconic devices of all time.
- This looks like something out of "Star Trek".
- It's sleek, it's futuristic.
People flip for the flip.
- No one really thought that people were gonna walk around
all day with a phone in their pocket.
- What would it take to combine everything into one device?
- And boom, you've got a smartphone.
- The BlackBerry became an extension of our arm.
- [Narrator] But as both battle for the top spot,
an unlikely player enters the race.
- It's not unlike the captain of the Titanic
ignoring an iceberg.
- It's no longer a phone,
it's now a computer in your pocket.
- Alexander Graham Bell could have never have thought
that the phone would've become what it is today.
[dramatic music]
- [Narrator] By the early 1970s,
Motorola and AT&T have coexisted for decades,
partnering on what the companies agree
is the next big thing, car phones.
- Phones were in cars, but it wasn't a widespread thing.
It created a lot of equipment that needed to be carried around
and basically worked off the power of your car.
- Motorola and AT&T had a pretty good relationship.
Motorola made the phones
and AT&T provided the car phone service.
- The original car phones weighed over 40 pounds,
cost hundreds of dollars a month,
and only worked over radio waves.
They are owned by, like, 5,000 Americans.
- The service only works in the area covered
by the transmitter,
which might go out 20 or 30 miles,
but once you went beyond that, you were out of range.
So it was not a service that was ready
for general use at all.
- [Narrator] Until 1973, when AT&T figures out a way
to improve upon it.
- Their idea was, well,
instead of the singular transmission tower,
what if we divided cities and towns
into small little regions
each with their own transmission tower?
More towers meant that as you drove around,
your call would be seamlessly transferred
between the towers without it dropping.
It looked like biological cells,
which led to us using the term cellular network.
- [Narrator] But telecommunications giant AT&T,
who dominate over 90% of landline telephones,
is appealing the FCC for complete control
of cellular phone production and transmission.
- AT&T is the mega brand of all mega brands at the time.
They have a legalized monopoly in telecommunications.
They have the products, they have the network,
and what they're looking to try to do
is to start to corner mobile technology
with phones that were mounted into your car.
- This was going to look a lot like the existing
car phone business, but with much better quality
and much higher capacity.
- AT&T petitioned the FCC to allow them
to be the only provider of cellular service,
as well as the only manufacturer of car phones
that would work upon it, which is a real threat to Motorola.
[tense music]
- [Narrator] To prevent another AT&T monopoly,
Motorola's CEO, Bob Galvin, will have to show the FCC
how competition will benefit the cell phone market
and the consumer.
- Bob Galvin spent his life working for his family business.
He'd learned the ins and outs of the business
from his father, Paul Galvin.
- They were one of the early pioneers
in the development of mobile communications.
- They actually started out as a company
focused on car radios and became known for developing
some of the first walkie talkies and pagers,
and eventually, as a defense contractor for electronics.
- [Narrator] With the FCC decision looming,
Galvin turns to his right-hand man.
- Send in John Mitchell.
- John Mitchell joined Motorola in 1953
as a product development engineer,
and he's a really rough-and-tumble guy.
He likes to innovate, he likes to get his hands dirty.
- AT&T filed this with the FCC.
[pensive music]
- They'll control the entire thing.
- That's where you come in.
- What Motorola have to do here
is come up with an actual, viable product
that would work successfully on this network
that AT&T is pioneering.
- But in order to do that,
they're going to have to do something huge.
[suspenseful music]
- [Narrator] So Mitchell looks to top engineer,
Marty Cooper, for help.
- Marty.
- Marty Cooper is a painstakingly hardworking
and imaginative engineer whose whole goal in life
is to dream up this new future, this new technology,
and how to make it into reality.
- You still have a mock-up for that handheld?
- Marty Cooper had this idea in the back of his head
that there was potential for a portable telephone,
something that could be carried around with you
and would allow you to make calls from a distance.
- He had a deep belief that communication
was between two people, not calling to a place,
like a home, or an office, or a car.
- [Narrator] It's an idea that will propel Motorola
to the forefront of wireless communication,
spawning a $500 billion industry,
and change the way nearly the entire world communicates:
with a handheld cellular phone.
- Come with me.
- [Narrator] But first, they'll have to convince Galvin
to go all in on their big idea.
- There was no concept of having to carry your phone all day.
It feels natural to us now,
because we know how much our phones can do.
Back then, the only point of reference were car phones,
or phones at home.
- Who wants to be reachable all day long?
- The idea of a portable phone
was something that you would see on "Star Trek",
or in the "Dick Tracy" comic strip.
- We can't just build products that people are asking for.
We need to be building things
that people don't even know that they need yet.
- If they can create the first handheld phone
to present at the FCC hearing,
that would be a huge deal and a huge blow to AT&T.
- All right.
- [Narrator] But there's a catch.
- You've got 90 days.
The FCC is gonna wanna see a prototype.
- [Narrator] Beyond facing off against an industry titan,
the team is now in a race against time
to show the world that the future of communication
rests in the palm of our hand.
- [Narrator] In 1973, two Motorola engineers
are working around the clock to do something extraordinary.
They're building the world's first portable phone
to prevent AT&T from monopolizing cellular networks.
- The stakes couldn't be any higher for Motorola's team.
If they fail to present a working prototype
at the FCC hearing, they're finished.
Their whole company is finished.
- [Narrator] With just three months
to present a viable prototype to the FCC,
they use existing car phone technology as a foundation.
- Motorola's car phones were enormous.
There were about six components.
You had a transmitter, a receiver, power,
all of that was connected to the car.
So the idea of taking all of that
and making it into a handheld package
seemed pretty unfeasible.
- They had to find a way to not only make
all of these pieces smaller,
get them to fit in this little box,
but also make sure that it had enough power
to be able to work.
- They've been actually able to miniaturize
some of the components,
but not all the components have been made
for what this phone needs.
So, Motorola has been deconstructing pagers, radios,
anything where they could find these miniature parts
that could fit into this one device.
- It was a real life game of Tetris for them,
as they played around with microchips,
receivers, transmitters, batteries,
all to make this little technology function.
- The head of their design team was a guy named Rudy Krolopp
and he came up with five possible designs.
One was a design like a book, where it would fold onto itself.
Another was the microphone kind of slipping in and out,
like lipstick.
They had, basically, a giant banana with an antenna.
I mean, can you imagine today all of us walking around
with these giant bananas on our ears?
- [Narrator] Ultimately, they land
on the most practical design.
- It looks a little bit like a boot.
Not only was it more familiar for people
who had been using car phones,
but it also had the most amount of space.
[tense music]
- [Narrator] With only days to spare
before the FCC makes a decision,
Marty Cooper is finally ready to test the prototype.
- In order to make the first cell phone call in history,
they actually rigged up an antenna
on top of a skyscraper in New York City
to help connect the call from the cell phone
down into landlines.
- So Marty Cooper, he gets his phone
and he's like, "You know what, I'm gonna go out,
I'm gonna walk on the street,
and I'm gonna make a call while I'm walking.
I'm gonna call Joel Engel over at AT&T."
- I'm calling you from the sidewalk.
Not a payphone, from a real handheld.
- Complete silence.
- Marty Cooper's first cell phone call
was a troll of epic proportions.
Not only did Motorola get a cell phone to make a call,
but they didn't even do it from a car, which is genius.
- At that point, I think Engel knew he was beat.
[inspiring music]
- I mean, here's AT&T, the largest company in the world,
brutally embarrassed on a global stage.
[tense music]
- [Narrator] Soon after, the FCC reaches a decision.
- All right, thank you.
We got it! - Ahh!
- [Narrator] Preventing AT&T from monopolizing
the cellular market is a triumphant win for Motorola,
but it opens up a new set of challenges.
- So you have this phone now that you want to market,
but there's no network to work on.
- In order for that cellular network to function properly,
you need a series of towers scattered throughout the country
such that the signal can be transmitted.
Without those towers, ain't no signal.
- The networks really aren't in place,
so they have to wait almost a decade,
10 years in the making.
- By this point, Galvin and the team have spent years
developing it without making a cent.
- [Narrator] With a cellular network in place,
on March 6th, 1983,
Motorola finally releases the first ever cell phone.
- 1983 was a year in history we will never forget.
Motorola comes out with the DynaTAC
and it changed the world.
- Cellular phone technology is an utter revolution
in human society.
Now, you have a device that you can carry
with you, in your day.
- That changed the world immediately.
Business deals can be made from a treadmill.
You can talk from the golf course.
- [Announcer] Scenes like this are becoming commonplace
in US cities where cellular is available today.
- Motorola runs this DynaTAC commercial
that says that everyone's gonna own this device eventually,
but they also say that this is a small device.
- It's incredibly funny that there was a time
when having a brick phone was considered light and portable.
- The DynaTAC, compared to, say, our iPhones today,
was a totally different experience.
It weighed five times as much, like two and a half pounds.
It took 10 hours to charge.
- Talk time is about 35 minutes,
but the old joke was, you weren't gonna talk on the phone
for 35 minutes because it was too heavy
to hold up for 35 minutes.
- Today's consumers would most assuredly
think the thing was a pile of junk,
but back then, there was something really magic about it.
- [Narrator] However, most people can't afford to buy one.
- It debuts at $3,995.
In today's money, it would've been $12,380.
[dramatic music]
- [Narrator] Despite the cost,
Motorola sells over 300,000 units,
which sets off an arms race as a wave of competitors
rush to come up with their own devices.
Including a modest Canadian startup
founded by two longtime friends.
- Mike Lazaridis and Doug Fregin are in their early twenties,
yet are not in any way interested in the typical things
that people in their early twenties might be interested in.
- Mike was a bit of a science nerd.
He liked building machines, taking apart computers,
playing with electronic gadgets.
- Doug Fregin is his childhood friend,
since the fifth grade.
- [Graham] Doug was a shy kid, very similar to Mike.
Would read every science book in the library.
- They have a fascination with wireless technology
and they want to create something
that will have a lasting impact on society.
[tense music]
- [Narrator] Their company will one day be valued
at over $40 billion,
selling 50 million devices a year,
and totally reinvent global communications.
But right now, Research In Motion
is just trying to land their first client.
- Thank you for coming.
- Research In Motion are doing whatever they can
to nail this pitch.
Basically, trying to convince them
that they have the perfect product
to revolutionize their company.
- Real time communication is the future.
Follow me, gentlemen.
- Their first invention is this pretty advanced
wireless system for its time
that sends text to a TV monitor.
- This is the same year Apple releases the very first Mac,
so the internet was still miles away
in terms of most people's awareness of it.
So, the idea of me typing a message
and it coming out on your screen was groundbreaking.
[keyboard clacking]
- [Narrator] To unleash their cutting-edge,
wireless text messaging technology,
Lazaridis and Fregin offer it to an industry titan.
- It worked.
- [Narrator] The partners secure a $600,000 deal
from none other-- - Any questions, gentlemen?
- [Narrator] Than General Motors
to use the messaging software on assembly lines.
- They essentially figured out text messaging,
but instead of recognizing the gold mine
that they're sitting on and hitting up
telecommunications companies,
they end up going to a company like GM.
It's a little crazy to imagine.
- They think, "This is it, you know, we've made it,"
but they really have no idea
of the impact they were about to have.
- [Narrator] Unwittingly, they hold the key to a revolution
that will soon overtake the entire cell phone market,
including Motorola.
- [Narrator] By 1987, cell phones
are starting to make their way into American pop culture
and Motorola's first cell phone is becoming a status symbol.
- The DynaTAC 8000 makes a big splash
in the movie, "Wall Street".
Gordon Gekko has his brick phone.
He's all over the place, making phone calls,
making his stock deals.
- The first time I think I ever saw a cell phone
was Zack Morris holding one of these things
on an episode of "Saved by the Bell",
and it looked like it was half the size of your head.
- [Narrator] But by 1988, cell phones are no longer
just an American product.
- Everyone wants to get in on the game.
They know it's the future.
They know it's where the world's gonna be heading,
and it unleashes just fierce competition.
- [Narrator] Including one electronics company in Asia.
- You may have heard of it, it's a small little company
based in South Korea, Samsung.
- [Narrator] They're making waves
with their first mobile phone, the SH-100.
- It's pretty much their version of DynaTAC
with a little less weight
and a little bit of a cheaper cost.
- So in business, you either innovate or you die.
Motorola knew that they had to be the leader of the pack
if they wanted to stay competitive in this game.
- [Narrator] But they'll have to do it
without their top engineer.
- Marty Cooper decides to leave Motorola a little bit
after the launch of the DynaTAC.
He wanted to get away from the large company setting
and go back to being in inventive mode.
Today, he's still regarded as the father
of the modern cell phone,
leaving a legacy of having built the first cell phone
in human history.
[tense music]
- [Narrator] Stepping in for Cooper is not an engineer,
but Motorola's head of design, Rudy Krolopp.
- Rudy doesn't want to just follow
in Marty Cooper's footsteps,
he wants to bring his own innovations to cell phones.
- [Narrator] Starting with making them more appealing
to the general public.
- Cell phones shouldn't be just for business tycoons,
they should be a daily essential,
as common as keys or a wallet.
- [Narrator] And Krolopp believes the key
lies in rethinking the phone's size.
- A phone that fits in your pocket?
- Uh-huh.
- Rudy Krolopp comes up with the design,
saying that this is the perfect product for everyone.
- Can this be done? - Absolutely.
- He says, "I'm gonna make a cell phone
smaller than the DynaTAC,
with absolutely no idea how to do it."
And the idea of condensing all that technology into
a small package, is something that has never been done,
and no one even knows if it can be done.
- The battery alone on a DynaTAC
weighed over five times the rest of the cell phone's body
and it lasted only 30 minutes.
So they have some major hurdles to overcome
if they're gonna design a smaller, lighter cell phone.
- [Narrator] All obstacles they must solve quickly
to stay ahead of incoming competition.
- It was, without question, the rise of the information age.
In fact, when Bill Clinton was elected in 1992,
he became the first president
to ever have a public e-mail address.
- Clinton makes it clear that he's really pro-business
and pro-international trade.
He helps pass the North American Free Trade Agreement,
which almost eliminates tariffs across Canada,
America, and Mexico.
So this becomes a really easy way
for companies to get a foothold into the American market,
especially telecommunications companies.
- [Narrator] Like Research In Motion,
who's hoping for their big break.
- Research In Motion made a name for itself
within wireless radio technology
by creating barcode scanners and credit card readers
on the wireless data network, Mobitex.
But they're still struggling financially.
- Research In Motion had good hardware engineers,
good software engineers,
but they didn't have many people who knew
how to sell and market,
so they were just barely keeping the business afloat.
- [Narrator] But then, in 1992,
an aspiring entrepreneur approaches Mike Lazaridis
with an offer to buy the company.
- Jim Balsillie is a 33-year-old Harvard Business School graduate
who is looking for a small company to take over,
and he sets his sights on RIM
to turn this small startup with potential
into a worldwide telecommunications giant.
- [Narrator] Balsillie is proposing a deal
that will put him in charge of RIM.
- I'm sorry, I can't do it.
- For a lot of entrepreneurs,
selling the company is the dream,
but Mike and Doug were so early in their career,
they didn't wanna give up what they had built together.
They wanted to be their own bosses,
so they didn't wanna sell the company to Jim.
- You know, I'm offering you more than just money,
but if you can't see that,
then maybe this just isn't the place for me.
- Research In Motion didn't have any hit products.
They were just barely staying alive.
- Wait.
125,000 for 33%, but we run the company together.
- So they develop a co-CEO structure.
Whereas Balsillie is going to be in the finance aspect of it,
Lazaridis is gonna be the technical aspect of it.
- Jim decided that he needed to come up with a product
that could take the company to the next level.
- Jim's really thinking of messaging in a more dynamic way.
How can we design a device that can allow us
to really empower on-the-go communication?
- You have very, um, impressive
messaging tech and everything.
Why is it that your messages only go one way?
- [Narrator] Balsillie's idea will put RIM
on a collision course with the market leader
in the cell phone industry, Motorola,
in the race to make the cellphone smarter.
- [Narrator] Motorola's head of design, Rudy Krolopp,
has been working for 10 years to transform the cell phone
from a luxury item into an everyday tool
for the average American.
- Rudy Krolopp wants to manufacture a phone
that's gonna appeal to the masses,
something that people need
and something that is actually small enough
to fit in your pocket.
- [Narrator] But in 1994, a Finnish company
beats him to the punch.
♪ [singing Nokia ringtone]
- The Nokia ringtone becomes an iconic sensation.
[Nokia ringtone plays]
To this day, people hear that ringtone
and they know exactly what it is.
- They're smaller, they look fun,
they come in different colors.
- They broke out of that brick cell phone look
and started the progress with modern cell phones.
- They called them candy bar phones.
They're still kind of clunky,
but they could fit in your pocket or in your handbag.
And that really signals that they're not just
going for the business person consumer,
but rather for people who might use these recreationally.
- [Narrator] Facing an ever-growing onslaught
of competition, Rudy Krolopp is feeling the pressure.
- Motorola knows that they need to come up with something
and come up with something quick if they wanna compete.
[cell phone rings]
- [Narrator] Then, Krolopp stumbles upon a major flaw
with the latest trendsetting phones.
- Hello?
No, I didn't call you.
I don't know, the phone must have dialed
while it was in my pocket.
- Because the buttons on the original cell phones
were in fact tangible push buttons
and people would oftentimes just throw them in their pocket,
a new phenomenon emerges.
The wonderful entity known as the butt dial.
Rudy realizes, this is my opportunity.
If I can find a way to prevent these accidental calls
from being made, that is going to be a game changer.
[tense music]
- [Narrator] Meanwhile, in Canada, Research In Motion
is looking to break into the handheld market
with their own game-changing device.
- Jim Balsillie is well aware
of how wireless communication is a big, lucrative business
and he spearheads this effort
to bring them into the conversation.
- [Narrator] They start by re-imagining an old gadget,
the pager.
- The pager gave you information,
but you couldn't give it information.
All it did was receive it.
- [Narrator] But now, co-CEOs, Jim Balsillie
and Mike Lazaridis, are looking to make the pager
also capable of sending messages.
And that's not all.
[internet dial-up beeping]
Dubbed "the year of the web,"
1994 sees an explosion of home computers and internet use.
- AOL has one million subscribers,
but each one of them is using dial-up service by the minute
to access their e-mail inboxes.
Pretty expensive.
- E-mail was replacing snail mail.
Chat was placing phone calls.
The internet is just shrinking the world down smaller.
- But sending e-mails and digital communication
was brutal.
Everything was dial-up, it would take forever.
It was not easy and convenient and instantaneous
like it is today.
- Jim and Mike saw a future in which people
were gonna be using e-mail much more heavily,
and they wanted to create a portable device
that would allow people to e-mail on the go.
- [Narrator] But they're faced with
an insurmountable roadblock.
- You have to remember, this was a time
before there was any kind of network
that could support data transfer.
The networks were strictly for voice communication.
So they needed to find a new network
that could support the data for messaging and for e-mail.
- [Narrator] While Research In Motion struggles
with the limitations of technology in the present,
Motorola's Rudy Krolopp has taken inspiration from the past
to create a smaller phone than anything on the market.
- This looks like something out of "Star Trek".
- In the 1960s, "Star Trek" had these portable
handheld devices, called communicators.
Now, the "Star Trek" communicator
doesn't really look like a phone.
In fact, it doesn't even have buttons on it,
but it has one really important feature
that Rudy was inspired by.
It flips shut.
- [Narrator] Krolopp's design also solves a major problem
with other cell phones at the time.
- Rudy comes up with a genius solution.
The flip protects the buttons from butt dials
and accidental calls.
- [Narrator] This ingenious fix will reshape cell phones
and give Motorola one of the most
iconic devices of all time.
- Not "Star Trek", StarTAC.
[intense music]
- [Narrator] In 1996, Motorola unleashes
the world's first flip phone, the StarTAC.
- The StarTAC was the first foldable
that was a true clamshell.
When you close it, it actually closed up the entire phone.
- Not much bigger than an actual wallet,
you could fit this in your pocket really easy.
- [Narrator] Krolopp's gamble to go all-in
on a pocket phone pays off.
- People flip for the flip.
It's sleek, it's futuristic, it is a game changer.
- No one had ever seen anything like it before.
I had a flip phone for a long time.
It probably wasn't until about 2012
when I sort of caved in and got my first iPhone.
- The StarTAC was the first phone
to have the vibrate feature,
so you could get notified in a discreet manner,
which was unheard of.
- [Narrator] The StarTAC is a massive hit,
selling 60 million devices worldwide
and cementing their stronghold in the industry.
- There's something kind of wonderful, and final,
and authoritative to closing it after a call,
and it becomes almost the perfect icon
of the 1990s in America.
[tense music]
- [Narrator] Meanwhile, Research In Motion
is having a breakthrough of their own,
as they work on creating their on-the-go e-mail
and messaging device.
- Research In Motion needed a network to use
for their mobile handheld device,
and they sort of had treasure buried
right in their own backyard.
A wireless data network called Mobitex.
- Right now, we're just using the network
to process credit card transactions.
- They had already been using this digital network
in their barcode scanners and in their credit card readers,
and they realized that they could also use Mobitex
for sending other data.
- Data can be whatever we want it to be, like messages.
- [Narrator] Finally, after three years in development,
in 1996, Research In Motion releases the Inter@ctive.
- This Inter@ctive device could search the web,
send messages, e-mails, faxes,
everything that you would normally need an office
and a work setting to do.
What's kind of crazy is that
with all the things the Inter@ctive device could do,
it couldn't make phone calls.
[tense music]
- [Narrator] But it gets the attention
of the undisputed leader of mobile technology, Motorola.
- What is this, a pager?
We make the most successful cell phone in the country
and it's half this size.
Why should we even care?
- We're still trying to make the best telephones,
but what if talking isn't the future?
- Motorola knows that you have to stay one step ahead
of your competitor or you'll become extinct.
[intense music]
- [Narrator] To outdo RIM, Motorola hits back
with their own messaging device in 1998.
- The Motorola PageWriter 2000
is kind of like a miniature computer with a full keyboard.
It's basically a copycat of the Inter@ctive,
a simple communication-style device that's not a phone.
- [Narrator] Motorola has launched the opening salvo
in a war of innovation and now RIM will have to respond.
- [Jim] Another beer, same tab.
- After RIM introduces the Inter@ctive device,
here comes Motorola, the giant.
RIM needs to react and they need to react very fast.
- Got anything else in there?
- RIM'S Inter@ctive device has a ton
of really good features, but a couple years ago,
you didn't think of carrying any device in your pocket.
But now you had this big bulky cell phone
and another device that you're carrying around.
- What would it take to combine everything into one device?
- Could you imagine how big it would have to be? [laughs]
[sighs]
[pensive music]
- Well, could we do it?
- In 1999, RIM starts working on a new device,
but this time, they're adding a phone feature.
They have to go all the way back to the beginning,
which means brand new systems and chips.
The biggest problem, they have no idea
how long this is gonna end up taking.
- Any more compact and you won't be able to type on it.
- RIM's first device is in a horizontal orientation
to accommodate the full keyboard,
but now they wanna make it smaller.
So how can you have a functional keyboard
if you are going to cut the device in half?
- What if instead of trying to make the device fit the hand,
we change how the hand uses it?
[dramatic music]
- [Narrator] Balsillie and Lazaridis
are ready to risk it all on a one-of-a-kind device
that might just be what they need to take down Motorola.
- This single device made all of us
go from typing like this,
to typing like this.
[dramatic music]
[tense music]
- [Narrator] As America enters the new millennium,
RIM is working to dethrone Motorola with what could be
the world's most transformative device yet.
- Phone, internet, messaging in one device.
- [Narrator] But they can't agree on the name.
- The Pocket Link.
[pensive music]
- They're calling it Easy Mail, or Mega Mail,
but they need a great name.
- I kind of wanted to name it after the buttons.
- The buttons?
- People love the way the little buttons look and feel,
and they start playing around with the device's appearance
in terms of trying to figure out its name.
And they begin thinking,
what's another thing that's dark colored
and has these smooth, rounded bumps all over it?
- They look like blackberries.
[pensive music]
- [Narrator] In 2002, two decades
after forming Research In Motion,
they release the first ever smartphone:
the BlackBerry.
- When the BlackBerry came out,
it was something unlike anything the world
or the workplace had ever seen,
and Motorola, Nokia, had nothing that could match it.
- It's now a phone, so you can speak
as well as interact with your e-mail, live, in real time.
Revolutionary for its time.
You had to be able to operate this phone
with nothing but your thumbs.
You had a little track wheel on the side
and when you wanted to select something, you'd press it in.
- [Narrator] The BlackBerry becomes a huge hit,
selling over four million units by 2006.
And the feature-packed device turns into something
users can't put down.
- People were just constantly glued to anything
that they had going on on their phone.
It was so addictive, they called it the CrackBerry.
- It felt both liberating,
because I can do my e-mail from everywhere,
but also confining because I can't escape my e-mail,
it's everywhere, and that's, of course, exactly the point.
- The BlackBerry was a status symbol, right?
And the BlackBerry was something incredibly cool and powerful.
So if you were assigned a BlackBerry at work,
it was kind of a signal to everyone else,
oh, this is hot stuff coming by.
- And from there, things just skyrocket.
They're selling them pretty much like hot cakes.
- [Narrator] BlackBerry becomes the biggest name
in cell phones, spurring the entire industry
to release copycats, including Motorola.
- 2007 was really the year for Research In Motion.
They had 12 million subscribers worldwide
and they had a value of $42 billion.
- Five years after they come out with the first ever smartphone,
BlackBerry is soaring in 2007,
until a new smartphone comes out
that looks nothing like the BlackBerry.
- Good luck typing an e-mail on that thing.
- Yeah.
- You have a proper keyboard on a BlackBerry.
This did away with the keyboard.
They went to a touch screen.
- Can we design anything better?
- Do we need to?
- It's not unlike the Titanic ignoring an iceberg.
"Uh, big, old thing of ice in front of us."
"It's fine, just a passing thing, it's fine."
- [Narrator] On June 29th, 2007,
the first Apple iPhone is released.
- They came at it recognizing
that no longer is it primarily a phone.
It's now a computer in your pocket.
- They had the funds that BlackBerry didn't have
to be able to develop a product far more advanced.
It has all types of new applications
that no other phone really has.
- It's a cliche to call it a revolution,
but that's what it was in the cellular industry.
Within a couple of years, Nokia was out of business.
Within a couple of years, Motorola was defunct.
If you look up Motorola on Wikipedia today,
that's what they say, "Died in 2011".
- [Narrator] And the popular BlackBerry
meets a similar fate.
- Today, BlackBerry is still in business,
but they're more into a software in cybersecurity.
Their phones are actually defunct.
- In essence, the BlackBerry was just here
for a couple of years
before the iPhone wiped it off into oblivion.
- [Narrator] But it was Research In Motion
who set the stage for the smartphones we rely on today.
- The BlackBerry really was more of the idea
of a device becoming part of us
than it was the device itself.
- [Narrator] What began as one cell phone call in 1973
changed the way nearly every person on Earth
communicates on a daily basis.
- Motorola was the pioneer in the cell phone industry.
If it wasn't for their first portable cell phone,
we would've had the traditional car phone
that was mounted in the car.
They're true pioneers, and from there, everything has grown.
- A cell phone today is a phone, it's a messaging service,
it's an e-mail service, it's a calendar,
it's a gaming device, it's a television.
- Had we not ever had cell phones,
there is no way we as a society
would be as advanced as we are.
Motorola, Research In Motion,
these are mega brands that built America
because our country could not be where we are without them.
And it is undoubtedly the reason why you can hear me now.
Can you hear me now?