It's been tough being a Canadian in the tech industry these last few years. RIM morphed (or dwarfed) from poster child to whipping boy. It's unfortunate that RIM spent the past seven years remaking the best phone that 2005 had to offer.

 

Pot-shots aside, RIM created the smartphone and changed the world. Key to this move was making the first smartphone carrier-friendly enough to justify the cost of building a wireless data network. They focused on low-bandwidth features like encryption, compression, email, and Blackberry Messenger (BBM). RIM was an innovator with little competition and lots of support from carriers.

 

But light competition and support from big bureaucratic telcos is a recipe for complacency and, ultimately, trouble.