Research In Motion is the Brain Child of two Electrical Engineering students’, and is known for its line of Blackberry Smartphones. Mike Lazaridis who attended the University of Waterloo, and Douglas Fregin who attended the University of Windsor, grew up together in the city of Windsor, Ontario, and formed RIM in 1984. The company’s first contract was a $600,000 deal with GM that commissioned them to produce a network computer control display system. [Hicks, 2012] The company grew over the next 8 years and had success with everything from film technologies, to toothbrushes. The firm really wanted to make a push into wireless communications technologies, and they realized they would need to restructure RIM in order to achieve this goal. Jim Balsillie, a 31-year-old Harvard MBA graduate was the man called upon to help RIM. Balsillie invested $125,000 to gain a 1/3rd ownership of the company. [Waddell, 2010] Balsillie’s purpose was to make sales and run all business aspects, while Lazaridis focused on running the engineering aspect of the company. In 1996 RIM produced the Bullfrog, a small device capable of wireless email. This product was too ahead of its time to catch on with the masses as people were just starting to come to terms with cell phones, and were not interested in mobile data technologies. The Blackberry was introduced in 1999, and had minimal success. On the business side of things 1999 was a milestone as its shares were listed on NASDAQ. [RIM, 2006] By 2003 RIM was part of the NASDAQ-100 and the sales of its blackberry smartphones were taking off. The product was very well received by the business community as it was capable of doing everything a businessperson needed while not in the office. They could access secure email servers, communicate with clients over the phone, and research things, all through a relatively small device, that went with them anywhere they went. 2004 marked the company’s 20th anniversary, and RIM’s successes continued. They reached 2 million subscribers, and won numerous awards. In 2005 the company’s subscribers doubled to 4 million and the company was on the fast track to being one of the biggest in the telecommunications world. [RIM, 2006] 2006 saw the introduction of the trackball, which Lazaridis pushed for, and was very well received by Blackberry users. The track ball enabled the Blackberry to work more like a computer, as the trackball was essentially a mouse. 2007 was a major milestone for RIM, as their blackberry subscribers passed 10 million. At this point they were the biggest firm in Canada with a market worth of $68 billion. In 2008 Blackberry introduced the bold. It was the best blackberry produced to date, and it was capable of competing with Apple’s new entry into the telecommunications market, the iPhone. In 2009 Fortune ranked RIM the fastest growing company in the world, with an average sales growth of 77% over the past three years.[Canadian Press, 2009] 2011 marked the beginning of the end for RIM. The unsuccessful launch of the Blackberry Playbook tablet was the first sign that RIM was failing. the next sign was the restructuring of the company which saw 2000 people lose their jobs. The next major event that signaled the end of RIM was a 3-day service outage which frustrated more then 70 million people worldwide. Shortly after the service outage Balsillie and Lazaridis stepped down, and handed the reigns over to the COO Thorsten Heins. [CBC, 2012] Heins is currently trying to save a sinking ship, as the delay of the Blackberry 10 has sent stock’s spiraling downward, with a drop of over 30% in one quarter. [Rubin, 2012] An additional 5000 cuts are expected to the RIM workforce. The most current issue to hit RIM was a service outage in Europe and the Middle East that came just as apple was set to release their 5th generation iPhone. [CBC, 2012] Market Analysts expect RIM to fail shortly after the release of Blackberry 10.