BlackBerry was once the king of smartphones.
In a sea of lacklustre offerings from Microsoft, Palm and Nokia, the BlackBerry – with its full QWERTY keyboard and slick corporate email integration – was an obvious choice for professionals and presidents alike.
Sadly, its maker, Research In Motion (RIM), failed to keep pace with a quickly evolving market. Facing fresh competition from Apple's iPhone and Google's Android, RIM management made a series of missteps that took them from front-runner to also-ran in just a handful of years. These days you're more likely to find a BlackBerry in the hands of an Occupy Wall Street protester than a Wall Street banker, a fact not lost on RIM shareholders, who forced co-chief executives Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis out of their roles last weekend.
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