Losing the Signal: The Untold Story behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry

Jacquie McNish · Sean Silcoff

May 2015 · Blackstone Audio Inc. · Narrated by William Hughes

About this audiobook

In 2009 BlackBerry controlled half of the smartphone market. Today that number is 1 percent. What went so wrong?

Losing the Signal is a riveting story of a company that toppled global giants before succumbing to the ruthlessly competitive forces of Silicon Valley. This is not a conventional tale of modern business failure by fraud and greed. The rise and fall of BlackBerry reveals the dangerous speed at which innovators race along the information superhighway.

With unprecedented access to key players, senior executives, directors, and competitors, Losing the Signal unveils the remarkable rise of a company that started above a bagel shop in Ontario. At the heart of the story is an unlikely partnership between a visionary engineer, Mike Lazaridis, and an abrasive Harvard Business School grad, Jim Balsillie. Together they engineered a pioneering pocket email device that became the tool of choice for presidents and CEOs. The partnership enjoyed only a brief moment on top of the world, however. At the very moment BlackBerry was ranked the world’s fastest-growing company, internal feuds and chaotic growth crippled the company as it faced its gravest test: Apple and Google’s entry into mobile phones.

Expertly told by acclaimed journalists Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff, this is an entertaining, whirlwind narrative that goes behind the scenes to reveal one of the most compelling business stories of the new century.

Ratings and reviews

The beginning of RIMM was an interesting look but a lot of us would know the recent parts if you were a Blackberry user or a nerd. The inner fighting of the organization towards the end was also an interesting take.

About the author

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 several bestselling 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.

William Hughes is an AudioFile Earphones Award–winning narrator. A professor of political science at Southern Oregon University in Ashland, Oregon, he received his doctorate in American politics from the University of California at Davis. He has done voice-over work for radio and film and is also an accomplished jazz guitarist.