■ In this exclusive second-part excerpt from the newly released book Losing the Signal: the Untold Story behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry, the company faces competition to its game-changing BBM service.
BBM’s success was bound to spark competition, and in 2009 and 2010, a rash of rival mobile instant messaging services began appearing around the world, including WhatsApp, Line, WeChat, and KakaoTalk. Unlike BBM, they worked across multiple platforms other than BlackBerrys and drew millions of new users each month.
The one that irked RIM the most was Kik Messenger. Kik was hatched by a University of Waterloo engineering and mechatronics student named Ted Livingston who had completed three internships at RIM, including time on BBM. In 2009 Mr Livingston decided to forgo his fourth year to develop his fledgling start-up. His initial plan was to develop a music-sharing service that worked with BBM, but after several months he decided to instead create a BBM-like chat application that worked on all smartphones.
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The BBM saga
■ The rise of BBM before BlackBerry lost the smartphone race - read the first part here
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Mr Livingston approached his former superiors in early 2010 and encouraged RIM to broaden BBM to work on non-BlackBerry devices. With its head start in mobile instant messaging, he believed RIM could crush any rivals if BBM was available on all platforms. He even told RIM in March 2010 he would stop developing Kik if BBM went “cross-platform”.
But the company was not interested. “They absolutely refused and they said, ‘No, we won’t do that’,” Mr Livingston said in a 2013 interview. “To be fair, from their perspective, it was hard. They said, ‘People are buying BlackBerrys for BBM’. That was a real risk”.
Mr Livingston launched Kik Messenger in April 2010 and claimed in court documents he told RIM of his plans. He was even invited to speak at a BlackBerry developer conference that September. But relations changed after he relaunched Kik in October. After 15 days, Kik had signed up 1 million users. At that point, Kik alleged in court documents, senior RIM executives “embark[ed] on a campaign to destroy or seriously harm Kik”. RIM terminated its agreements with Kik, removed Kik from its app store, and sued Kik for infringing on its intellectual property.
Mr Livingston asked one of his investors to intervene – Jim Estill, RIM’s longest-standing outside director. Mr Estill responded by pressing Don Morrison, the chief operating officer, to meet Mr Livingston. According to a December 2010 memo from RIM’s law firm Bennett Jones to the board’s audit and risk management committee, Mr Estill did not disclose his personal interest in RIM’s newest rival to Morrison or the board. The relationship raised a potential conflict of interest, the legal memo warned.
Mr Estill resigned shortly after the conflict issue was raised. He concedes his involvement with Kik put him in potential conflict with his position as a RIM director. “I thought I disclosed it from the start, but I could be mistaken,” he says. “That’s why you resign, you do the right thing.”
The spat with Kik was a warning shot in a larger battle that would play out within RIM over the next year, opening the greatest rift within the wounded company. As it lost its lead in the smartphone race, some RIM executives realised that if they did nothing, BBM would be surpassed by more open mobile chat services. An internal debate over how best to capitalise on BBM’s success as smartphone sales began to falter would open fault lines in the company at its darkest hour.
It was a long night from which the company is still struggling to emerge as it searches for its place in a world it used to rule.
From Losing the Signal: the Untold Story behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry, by Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff
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WHAT IS A BLACK HOLE?
1. Black holes are objects whose gravity is so strong not even light can escape their pull
2. They can be created when massive stars collapse under their own weight
3. Large black holes can also be formed when smaller ones collide and merge
4. The biggest black holes lurk at the centre of many galaxies, including our own
5. Astronomers believe that when the universe was very young, black holes affected how galaxies formed
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
The rules on fostering in the UAE
A foster couple or family must:
- be Muslim, Emirati and be residing in the UAE
- not be younger than 25 years old
- not have been convicted of offences or crimes involving moral turpitude
- be free of infectious diseases or psychological and mental disorders
- have the ability to support its members and the foster child financially
- undertake to treat and raise the child in a proper manner and take care of his or her health and well-being
- A single, divorced or widowed Muslim Emirati female, residing in the UAE may apply to foster a child if she is at least 30 years old and able to support the child financially
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
Skewed figures
In the village of Mevagissey in southwest England the housing stock has doubled in the last century while the number of residents is half the historic high. The village's Neighbourhood Development Plan states that 26% of homes are holiday retreats. Prices are high, averaging around £300,000, £50,000 more than the Cornish average of £250,000. The local average wage is £15,458.
The burning issue
The internal combustion engine is facing a watershed moment – major manufacturer Volvo is to stop producing petroleum-powered vehicles by 2021 and countries in Europe, including the UK, have vowed to ban their sale before 2040. The National takes a look at the story of one of the most successful technologies of the last 100 years and how it has impacted life in the UAE.
Read part four: an affection for classic cars lives on
Read part three: the age of the electric vehicle begins
Read part one: how cars came to the UAE
