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FAQs
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What have real estate agents found to be the best online tools for getting leads?
Facebook & Instagram are excellent tools for real estate companies to use if they want to make the most of their social media strategy. If you want to promote real estate on Instagram, there are a few important things to consider.Using these social networks to collect leads well involves more than simply posting images regularly. You need to be able to plan and run the right, which means you need to know where to find your audience.Now let me give my personal suggestion on this matter, the best way to collect leads using Facebook & Instagram is the Facebook Lead Ads feature.Why the Facebook lead ads is so important for your brand?Here are the 4 core reasons for a business to choose Lead Ads as your advertising platform:1)It’s cheaper than the traditional types of ads. There’s no doubt that by using Lead Ads you can definitely save money of your advertising budget. Based on our experience we can confirm that using Facebook Lead ads reduces the costs per lead to less than a half of usual spend.2)It creates brand awareness. Facebook, currently the biggest social media platform is the right place to start to build your brand awareness, as makes the whole process of creating your audience and converting it into a lead, as easiest as it can be.3)It saves time. When Facebook presented Lead Ads, they announced it as tap tap done feature, and it literally is like that. It saves user’s time but also yours, as make it fast and easy for you, lead creator to prepare and manage your leads.4)It is a fully customizable tool. In fact, it is possible to customize the form with different fields like: size people business, field of study, etc…when creating an ads campaign.Don’t worry if it is your first time in the Lead Ads world I am happy to suggest to you this free guide, that will help you to learn more about this topic ;)Check out our video to discover 4 instagram tips to boos your real estate marketing strategy !
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What are some must have Android apps?
Edit: I wrote this answer for “must have Android apps” but these are same apps which have changed the way I used to live my life. Each and every App has helped me in one or the other way. I hope you will also find them helpful and a bit life changing. So here is the list: 10. Psiphon For those who use WiFi with proxy settings. So Psiphon bypasses and tunnel the websites or app through a different IP Address. 9. Mirror It's a simple app to record your mobile screen. Based on the concept of CamStudio in PC where you can record your screen, Mirror offers recording of your Mobile screen. 8. NTES- National Train Enquiry System If you are from India and you want to know the running status, cancelled train (partial or fully), Live Station and other features, this App is a must have. 7. VOLT Simple but effective for those who want to learn new vocabulary. That's too obvious, then why not others? Coz here you get the “memory key” which helps you relate the words and easier to remember them. 6. Parchi It a note making app. But here’s a catch. You can view, review, edit and add right from your lockscreen without need to open the app. Isn't that amazing! I personally find this app very useful. 5. edX If you are student or a learner who wants learn something new everyday, and cannot afford to go in the prestigious institutions like MIT, Harvard University, Cambridge, IITM, etc ten it is a must have app. Enroll yourself in any course and Bazinga!! You are ready to learn from the most amazing professors. Similar to edX, we have Coursera. 4. Walnut Manage your expenses on your finger tips. Its easier then that. It shows you your monthly expenditure, ATM locations, bill remainders and many more features. Its a must have app. 3. CamScanner Everyone doesn’t own a scanner but most of us have camera. So click the pic, upload to CamScanner and voila you are done. You have the scanned copy of your documents, notes, Marksheet and upload them on your DigiLocker. 2. inshorts Till now you all must be knowing this app. The tagline is also simple “News in 60 words” and trust me it is worth having. In this “I don't have time” world, you need news to be fast and accurate so here it is. 1. DigiLocker If you have this app then you don’t need to carry your personal documents like driving license, Adhar card, voter ID card, or even your Marksheets. Keep them safe in actual locker and leave the rest to your DigiLocker. And the best part is that it is acceptable as the original ones at every governmental or non governmental institution because it is developed under Digital India initiative. That's it for the day. Thank you and Enjoy !!! Update 1: Today I came across two new apps which I found useful. Hope it would help you all. 1.Forest : Stay focused Features • A self-motivated and interesting way to help you beat phone addiction • Stay focused and get more things done • Share your forest and compete with friends • Track your history in a simple and pleasant way • Earn reward and unlock more tree species • Customize your whitelist : Leaving Forest and using apps in whitelist won’t kill your tree. 2. Swachh Bharat Toilet Locator Swachh Bharat Toilet Locator is specifically useful for Indians who're committed for Swachh Bharat. Update 2: So I am back with yet another interesting app for you all. And trust me it is worth hanving. You are bored just go through it and kaboooom !!! You are into a black hole. Enjoy the ride. 3. Curiosity It is the latest app I installed but got addicted to it. It’s exactly works like its name, generates a curiosity which inturn increases your knowledge. It covers a large field of scope from Humanity to science to faith and many more. This app deserves more snapshots but why to increase the length of my answer. Comment below if you think the list should be updated? Thank you.
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What is so great about Chandra Babu Naidu?
CREDITS: Anurag kumar S (अनुराग कुमार एस), Students at Chandigarh University (2017-present)40 ACHIEVEMENTS OF CHANDRABABU NAIDU IN 4 YEARS AS CHIEF MINISTER OF ANDHRA PRADESH.4 Years as Chief Minister of the new state of Andhra Pradesh !Did he live upto the expectations of the people of Andhra Pradesh ?Did his vision translate into something quantifiable ?Here are the 40 major achievements of Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Mr.Chandrababu Naidu.1. MAKING VIZAG AND VIJAYAWADA AS ONE OF THE CLEANEST CITIES OF INDIA.Vizag and Vijayawada have amazingly transformed into India’s one of the Cleanest Cities. The Cleanliness of Vizag has been attracting tourism from Across the country and from beyond.2. DECIDED THE CAPITAL AT THE CENTER OF THE STATE SO THAT IT IS ACCESSIBLE TO EVERYONE AND NAMED IT“AMARAVATI – THE PEOPLE’S CAPITAL “As Andhra Pradesh is a very long state, Capital should be accessible to everyone, so he decided the capital to be in the center.Amaravati Started as an Idea that way.3. CONVINCED FARMERS TO DONATE 35,000 ACRES OF LAND IN LAND POOLING SCHEME WHERE BOTH FARMERS AND GOVERNMENT HAD A WIN WIN SITUATION.A master stroke of all is the Land Pooling scheme of Amaravati which is a role model for the whole nation. There are instances of Governments changing for land acquisitions of around 1000 Acres. In this case farmers volunteered to come and join the land pooling.In land pooling, Farmers get 1/3 of the land back in the developed area of Amaravati City. Farmers are the biggest supporters of Amaravati and are being made the front face for their love and sacrifice for building a Future City for the 5 Crore Andhra Pradesh people.4. BIGGEST ACHIEVEMENT, THOUGH UNDERPLAYED IS MOVING EMPLOYEES FROM HYDERABAD TO AMARAVATI.Andhra Pradesh’s revenue crisis was making it worse and people were not happy spending their taxes in a different state, Also for people of Andhra Pradesh, going to Hyderabad to meet their government wasn’t feeling great.Instead of waiting for whole of amaravati to be ready, Mr.Naidu built an Interim Capital with 6 Lakh Sft of Office Space in a record time of 4 Months.20,799 employees of the Andhra government’s secretariat offices and 89 departments spread across Hyderabad have moved to the new capital Amaravati bringing new activity in the capital, new taxes and new businesses as these employees spend their salary in the new state of Andhra Pradesh and not in Hyderabad, so would be people who will be coming to meet them for work.5. UNIVERSITIES STARTED TO OPERATE IN THE VERY FIRST YEAR OF INCEPTION.Due to fast follow up from Andhra Pradesh state and due to the Union Ministers TDP had in the NDA govt, some of the non fund involved processes moved very fast.IIT Tirupati, IIM Visakhapatnam, NID Amaravati, NIT Tadepalligudem, etc have Started Classes the first year of forming the government.Sadly due to not enough fund support from Center, They are all still running from Temporary campuses.6. PRIVATE UNIVERSITIES RALLIED TO AMARAVATIDue to the good relation Mr.Naidu has with the universities like SRM and VIT, they all liked the idea of Amaravati, the people’s capital and rallied to Amaravati.They bought land at around Rs.2 Crs per acre from Government and started their universities.SRM Amaravati and VIT Amaravati campuses are ready and operational for over two years now with their campus buildings constantly growing.Amrita is yet to start the construction.7. ATTRACTED AND GROUNDED THE KIA MOTORS, INDIA’S LARGEST FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT (FDI) EVER !Kia Motors is one of the Biggest Success Stories of CBN Government. $2 Billion has been invested into Andhra Pradesh by Kia Motors, Its the Largest FDI Investment in India.8. HERO MOTORS DITCHED NEIGHBOURING STATE TO COME TO ANDHRA PRADESH.How Hero Motors came to Andhra Pradesh saying no is Telangana and Maharastra is a huge lesson for all the Entrepreneurs and Leaders.Mr.Naidu Asked Munjal, CEO of Hero Motors for a meeting over dinner and flew to Mumbai to meet him and convinced him to set up the Hero Motors manufacturing unit in Andhra Pradesh.Apollo Tyres, Isuzu Motors, Cadbury, Asian Paints and many more Industries have rallied to Andhra Pradesh considering the 24*7 power, abundance of water and good governance in Andhra Pradesh.9. RIVER INTERLINKING OF RIVER KRISHNA AND RIVER GODAVARI.First time in India Ever, Two major rivers got integrated with Pattiseema Project giving water to farmers across the state. The surplus waters in River Krishna due to the River Integration were used to give Water to Rayalaseema which was a huge win.160 TMC of water has been lifted from Godavari to Krishna which resulted in a farming yield of 18,000 Crores in Krishna Delta in 3 years and 7,400 Crores in Rayalaseema over 2 Years.10. LOAN WAIVER OF 24000 CRORESDespite the rough economic situation, Farmer Loans of 24,000 Crores are Waived.11. PENSION INCREASED TO RS.1000.Old age and physically challenged Pension was increased to Rs.1000 from Rs.200. This money deposited into accounts on the 1st of every month without any mediator intervention.12. REAL TIME GOVERNANCECM’s CORE Dashboard is one of the World’s Best MIS with all the data from around the State, kept open to public in real time. CM and his team use this data and help deliver service better.13. GREAT PROGRESS IN POLAVARAM.When NDA Offered 3 Central Minister Positions to TDP, CBN asked we will only take 2, for the third, we want full support to Polavaram Project which is a lifeline to Andhra Pradesh.7 Mandals of Telangana were merged in Andhra Pradesh on demand of Mr.Naidu and Polavaram construction was given to the State for a speedy process.Any major project of that size would take 15 years in India but Polavaram has made tremendous progress in the last 4 years where 56% of the project is completed. Its currently in slow progress due to Fund deficit by Central Government.CM Chandrababu Naidu renamed Somavaram ( Monday ) as Polavaram where he reviews the project status either through Live streaming or by personal visit.14. SUCCESSFULLY FACED HUD HUD ALONG WITH THE BRAVE PEOPLE OF VIZAG AND TRANSFORMED VIZAG INTO INDIA’S ONE OF THE CLEANEST CITIES.If we look back at the 4 years, Hud Hud had the biggest need of leadership. Mr.Naidu rose above everyone and helped Vizag recover at jet speed.He lived out of a bus, did surprise visits around the city, summoned the communication company heads, prepared neighbouring state to send supplies right after the cyclone passes, recovered power, recovered normalcy in record time.Won Hearts.!15. FRANKLIN TEMPLETON, FINTECH VALLEY, SIGNATURE TOWERS, INNOVATION TOWER TO VIZAG.One of the first big companies to step into Vizag is the prestigious Franklin Templeton. Fintech Valley in Visakhapatnam has been attracting many more companies to Vizag, the City of Destiny.P.S: Meanwhile Pawan Kalyan thinks that Franklin Templeton is a person who lives in US.16. MAKING RAYALASEEMA THE ELECTRONIC MANUFACTURING HUB.Xiaomi, Foxconn and many other Electronic Manufacturers made Sri City and Rayalaseema their home.17. NEW TERMINAL TO VIJAYAWADA AIRPORT AND INTERNATIONAL FLIGHTS TO VIZAG.An amazing new terminal is built in Vijayawada in record time and has made it comfortable for people to fly from Vijayawada.Direct flights to Singapore, Malaysia, Dubai and Sri Lanka have started from Vizag to make it more accessible to the world. So to be done in Vijayawada too.18. MAKING VEHICLE REGISTRATION PROCESS ONLINE.Andhra Pradesh is the only state in the country to fully automate the Vehicle registration process removing the middle men. Vehicles are registered automatically at the time of sale and there is not contact between RTA and the Consumer removing any chance for Bribes.19. FIBERGRID – CHEAPEST INTERNET EVER !AP FiberGrid is World’s cheapest internet service rolled out by the government where Internet and TV are provided at INR 149 Only making people access the information across the globe.20. LED AND IOT-FYING STREET LIGHTSLEDfying the Street Lights has made AP stand as role model by saving millions of Units of Power.8 lakh 30 thousand Street Lights have been transformed into LED and IoT enabled.You can check which Street Lights are on and which are Not from CM dashboard and any one with repair has to be back into action within an SLA of 24 hours.21. E CABINET. FIRST AND ONE AND ONLY.Cabinet meeting have turned Paper Free, making it efficient and smart.22. DIGITAL CLASSROOMS. GOVERNMENT CLASSROOMS THAT ARE MORE SMART THAN THAT OF PRIVATE SCHOOLS.Class rooms are Digitalized by providing internet, screen, audio system, computer and digital content to make children learn more efficiently.23. BIKE AMBULANCES FOR TRIBALSBike Ambulances were launched to make medical care accessible to the remotest parts of the State. This has been a boon in the Tribal Areas where the access by road is limited.24. SOLAR PUMPSET FOR FARMERSSolar Pumpsets were given to farmers at subsidised prices making them access power for free and anytime they wish.25. HIGHEST GDP GROWTH IN THE NATIONAndhra Pradesh under Mr.Naidu has achieved Double Digit Growth rate, highest in the Country.AP has been growing at an average of 10.5% Growth Rate while India’s Avg growth rate is about 7%.26. NTR SUJALANTR Sujala has been implemented in various places across the state where clean water is made accessible at very low cost of only Rs. 2 for 20 Litres of Water.27. ANNA CANTEENAnna Canteens have been rolled out to make food accessible for cost as low as Rs. 5.28. 24*7 POWER.Power Cuts were a very common scene until Mr.Naidu took over the government. Andhra Pradesh since then been having 24*7 Power even in the Peak Summer where the demand is very high.Thanks to the LED conversion of Street Lights as well as Lights at home, Millions of Units have been saved reducing the demand. Also, Additions of 2000 MW of Solar Power and 3000 MW of Wind Power in the last 4 years has been a huge add on making Andhra Pradesh one of the most Efficient and Green states.29. CII PARTNERSHIP SUMMITCII Partnership Summit was held successfully in Visakhapatnam for 3 times in a row, which is very rare as PS happens in a new state everytime.This attracted thousands of crores of investment to AP and with it JOBS.!30. COLLABORATION WITH BILL GATES FOR AGRI GROWTH.Bill Gates came down to Andhra Pradesh to collaborate with the growth of Agriculture in Andhra Pradesh.31. NTR HOUSING SCHEMEApartment styled homes were built for the low income group across Andhra Pradesh to help them have a home.32. JOBS JOBS JOBS !An investment of 15,95,157 Crores was attracted and which will trickle down into 36,58,280 Jobs, of which 2,97,370 Jobs have already gone live.Kia has started hiring in ananthapur, IT companies started to hire in Vizag, Amaravati and Tirupati.33. WATER TO RAYALASEEMA FOR THE FIRST TIME AFTER MORE THAN 4 DECADES.Many rivers and lakes have seen water after more than 4 decades. This was possible by saving water in Srisailam as Godavari water was pumped to Krishna. Then the Water in Srisailam was diverted to Rivers and Canals across Rayalaseema making Rayalaseema see Irrigation Water after Decades.34. CHANDRANNA BHEEMA HELPING FAMILIES OF WORKERS IN UNORGANIZED SECTOR STAND BACK ON THEIR FOOT.An financial help of 5 Lakh INR is being given to families of workers who face sudden demise to make their families stand back and kids continue their education when they lose the bread earner of the family.35. PEOPLE FIRST. 1100 RESPONSE CENTER.1100 Call center was launched and a ticket number is created for every complaint and is tracked till closure. CM directly monitors the performance of the number of issues being resolved.A total of 80, 213 complaints are received as of Sep 2017 and of which 44919 cases were resolved, other being pending and work in progress.Next time you have an issue with a government service, Call 1100.36. FINALISING WORLD CLASS DESIGNS FOR AMARAVATI.Norman Foster group has given some amazing designs for Amaravati Assembly building, High Court and other Structures.AMARAVATI CITY SCAPEVIEW OF ASSEMBLY BUILDING.VIEW OF HIGH COURT BUILDING, AMARAVATI37. AMARAVATI TO ANANTHAPUR EXPRESS WAY.A Straight line Highway that will cut down the travel time from Rayalaseema to Amaravati which is 10 hours now is planned, Land acquisition is close to complete, but due to unavailability of Fund from the Center, this project is waiting to get implemented.Once implemented this Express Way will stand as a Benchmark for the Nation and will be a Pride of South India kicking off Economic progress in new areas of Andhra Pradesh.38. RENOVATION OF BUS STANDS USED BY MILLIONS OF PEOPLE.All the bus stands across the state are renewed and maintained the cleanest ever. Bus Stands this summer also got huge coolers to keep the Passengers at Comfort making APSRTC a got to Travel Partner.39. ANDHRA PRADESH STOOD NO.1 IN INCREASE IN FOREST COVER.Andhra Pradesh Stood No.1 in Increase of Forest Cover between 2015-2017 with 2141 sq km, followed by Karnataka with 1101 sq km and Kerala with 1043 sq km.40. KICKING OFF BUILDING THE MEGA CITY, AMARAVATI.The Roads are even clearly visible on Google Maps8 Line Roads Across Amaravati are close to Finish. MLA Quarters are under construction. Other major constructions to start soon.Andhra Pradesh is also a model state in Open Defecation Free with 37,01,615 Toilets built in the last 4 years.17,000 Kms of Cement Roads have also been laid across towns and Villages of Andhra Pradesh, 6000 Kms of Roads in last year alone.Considering that Andhra Pradesh is a newly formed state left with no revenue and a Capital City to operate from, First 4 years of Mr.Chandrababu Naidu Government have definitely set a vision for the progress to come and has brought the state from Revenue losses to a Stable Economy with a Capital in Making.Andhra Pradesh has also achieved No.1 status in multiple areas like Cleanliness, Good Governance, Ease of Doing Business, Usage of Technology in governance, Best Water Management, etc.Wishing Andhra Pradesh a Progressive Future and Amaravati a Happening City Soon.Achievements…source:-N. Chandrababu Naidu - WikipediaAt 28, the state's youngest assembly member and ministerLongest serving Chief Minister for the combined state of Andhra Pradesh (1995–2004)First Chief Minister of the newly formed state of Andhra Pradesh from 8 June 2014.Longest-serving leader of opposition in the Andhra Pradesh assemblyVoted IT Indian of the Millennium in a poll by India Today and 20:20 MediaHe was named "SOUTH ASIAN OF THE YEAR" by the TIME Magazine, USAHe was described as one of the Hidden Seven working wonders around the world, by Profit, a monthly magazine published by Oracle Corporation, US.Business Person of the Year by Economic TimesHe calls himself as "CEO of Andhra Pradesh".The Pune-based organisation, Bharatiya Chatra Sansad, in partnership with MIT School of Governance, has honoured him with "Aadarsh Mukhyamantri Puraskar" (Model CM Award) in its 6th annual session on 30 January 2016.Transformative Chief Minister Award’ in May 2017Source: http://www.southreport.com/4yrs-...Read more: king of my own kingdom!Hope you liked them.!Thanks!!!
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What are the best property management systems?
There is no one property management system that is ideal for every use case. It depends on who you are and what you are looking for in the system.For residential property managers:If you are a professional property manager and have full service clients, then I have found the best softwares are Yardi and Appfolio. Yardi is a bit more of a “legacy” system — robust but not as fresh as Appfolio, promoting a great UI/UX (user interface and user experience). If you are a property manager and do not use software, then IMO - you are failing at your business. Software will reduce your overhead costs and help mitigate risks of forgetting lease renewals, late fees, etc.. The cost and time related to the setup can be gruesome, but it is well worth it in the end. You’ll be able to take on more clients and provide them with a much better experience.For residential property owners:The majority of owners across the US (80%) self manage their properties. Most of them do not use software, because it is a relatively new concept for them. From a systems perspective, it will depend on what you are looking to accomplish with your real estate goals.Here is an article that all owners should read to understand what kind of management system they want (passive or involved) and what type of solutions cater to their needs.
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What is the main reason of the downfall of blackberry company?
Shortly after the release of the first iPhone, Verizon asked BlackBerry to create a touchscreen “iPhone killer.” But the result was a flop, so Verizon turned to Motorola and Google instead.In 2012, one-time co-CEO Jim Balsillie quit the board and cut all ties to BlackBerry in protest after his plan to shift focus to instant-messaging software, which had been opposed by founder Mike Lazaridis, was killed by current CEO Thorsten Heins.Mr. Lazaridis opposed the launch plan for the BlackBerry 10 phones and argued strongly in favour of emphasizing keyboard devices. But Mr. Heins and his executives did not take the advice and launched the touchscreen Z10, with disastrous resultsLate last year, Research In Motion Ltd. chief executive officer Thorsten Heins sat down with the board of directors at the company’s Waterloo, Ont., headquarters to review plans for the launch of a new phone designed to turn around the company’s fortunes.His weapon was the BlackBerry Z10, a slim device with the kind of glass touchscreen that had made Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. the dominant names in the global smartphone market.But one of RIM’s directors was frustrated by what he saw, and spoke out, according to one person who was in the room. There is a cultural problem at RIM, he told the group, and the Z10 was a glaring manifestation of it.The speaker was none other than Michael Lazaridis, the genius behind the BlackBerry, the company’s co-founder and its former co-CEO. Minutes earlier, he said, he had spoken with Mr. Heins’s newest executive recruits, chief marketing officer Frank Boulben and chief operating officer Kristian Tear.Mr. Boulben and Mr. Tear had dismissively told Mr. Lazaridis that the market for keyboard-equipped mobile phones – RIM’s signature offering – was dead.In the board meeting, Mr. Lazaridis pointed to a BlackBerry with a keyboard. “I get this,” he said. “It’s clearly differentiated.” Then he pointed to a touchscreen phone. “I don’t get this.”To turn away from a product that had always done well with corporate customers, and focus on selling yet another all-touch smartphone in a market crowded with them, was a huge mistake, Mr. Lazaridis warned his fellow directors. Some of them agreed.The boardroom confrontation was a telling moment in the downfall of Research In Motion.Once the giant of the smartphone business, RIM, which was renamed BlackBerry Ltd. in the summer, is now on its knees. The company reported a $965-million (U.S.) fiscal second-quarter loss Friday, primarily because of a massive writedown of Z10 phones that sit, unsold and unwanted, about eight months after they first hit the market. The company is cutting 4,500 jobs, 40 per cent of its work force, in a desperate bid to bring costs in line with plummeting revenue.Investors, who have lived through the destruction of more than $75-billion of the company’s market value over the past five years, are still wondering how BlackBerry managed to blow its runaway lead and became a bit player in the smartphone market it invented.An investigation by The Globe and Mail, which included interviews with two dozen past and present company insiders, exposes a series of deep rifts at the executive and boardroom levels.Those divisions hurt the company’s ability to develop products just as it faced its greatest challenge from more nimble and creative rivals – and contributed to the downfall of Canada’s biggest technology company.Once a fast-moving innovator that kept two steps ahead of the competition, RIM grew into a stumbling corporation, blinded by its own success and unable to replicate it. Several years ago, it owned the smartphone world: Even U.S. President Barack Obama was a BlackBerry addict. But after new rivals redefined the market, RIM responded with a string of devices that were late to market, missed the mark with consumers, and opened dangerous fault lines across the organization.Months before their boardroom showdown, Mr. Heins and Mr. Lazaridis found themselves in another strategic standoff in which they were pitted against Jim Balsillie, Mr. Lazaridis’s long-time business partner and co-CEO.Inside RIM, the brash Mr. Balsillie had championed a bold strategy to re-establish the company’s place at the forefront of mobile communications. The plan was to push wireless carriers to adopt RIM’s popular BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) instant messaging service as a replacement for their short text messaging system (SMS) applications – no matter what kind of phone their customers used.It was a novel plan. If RIM could get BBM onto hundreds of millions of non-BlackBerry phones, and charge fees for it, the company would have an enormous new source of profit, Mr. Balsillie believed. “It was a really big idea,” said an employee who was involved in the project.But the plan ran into stiff opposition at senior levels. Not long after Mr. Heins took over as RIM’s CEO in January, 2012, he killed it, with Mr. Lazaridis’s support.That was it for Mr. Balsillie. Weeks later, he resigned from the board and cut his ties to the company.“My reason for leaving the RIM board in March, 2012, was due to the company’s decision to cancel the BBM cross-platform strategy,” Mr. Balsillie said in a brief statement to The Globe and Mail, his first public comments on his departure. He declined a request for an interview.Mr. Lazaridis, who declined to speak about board matters, resigned as a director this past March after delaying his retirement by a year at the board's request.Now, BlackBerry’s future is in doubt. This week, Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd., a Toronto-based investment company, announced a plan to lead a $4.7-billion takeover of the company. The offer is conditional, and requires a group of so-far uncommitted institutional investors to back Fairfax and provide financing.The company’s near-collapse is a painful situation for Mr. Lazaridis, a gifted engineer who co-founded RIM in a tiny Waterloo office above a bagel shop in 1984.“It’s really hurting me,” he said in an interview. “I can’t imagine what the employees must be thinking. Everyone is talking about the most likely scenario being that it will be broken up and sold off for parts. What will happen to the Waterloo region, or Canada? What company will take its place?”Competition risingMike Lazaridis was at home on his treadmill and watching television when he first saw the Apple iPhone in early 2007. There were a few things he didn’t understand about the product. So, that summer, he pried one open to look inside and was shocked. It was like Apple had stuffed a Mac computer into a cellphone, he thought.To Mr. Lazaridis, a life-long tinkerer who had built an oscilloscope and computer while in high school, the iPhone was a device that broke all the rules. The operating system alone took up 700 megabytes of memory, and the device used two processors. The entire BlackBerry ran on one processor and used 32 MB. Unlike the BlackBerry, the iPhone had a fully Internet-capable browser. That meant it would strain the networks of wireless companies like AT&T Inc., something those carriers hadn’t previously allowed. RIM by contrast used a rudimentary browser that limited data usage.“I said, ‘How did they get AT&T to allow [that]?’ Mr. Lazaridis recalled in the interview at his Waterloo office. “ ‘It’s going to collapse the network.’ And in fact, some time later it did.”Publicly, Mr. Lazaridis and Mr. Balsillie belittled the iPhone and its shortcomings, including its short battery life, weaker security and initial lack of e-mail. That earned them a reputation for being cocky and, eventually, out of touch. “That’s marketing,” Mr. Lazaridis explained. “You position your strengths against their weaknesses.”Internally, he had a very different message. “If that thing catches on, we’re competing with a Mac, not a Nokia,” he recalled telling his staff.RIM soon earned a chance to show up its new rival. RIM’s early smartphones had been a hit for Verizon Wireless, one of the biggest U.S. wireless players. Frozen out of the iPhone – Apple had signed an exclusive deal with AT&T – Verizon executives approached RIM in June, 2007, and asked if it could develop “an iPhone killer.” The product would need to have a touchscreen with no physical keyboard. Verizon would back the U.S. launch with a massive marketing campaign.RIM executives jumped at the chance. At one management meeting, Mr. Balsillie called it RIM’s most important strategic opportunity since the launch of its two-way e-mail pager.The product was the BlackBerry Storm. It was the most complex and ambitious project the company had ever done, but “the technology was cobbled together quickly and wasn’t quite ready,” said one former senior company insider who was involved in the project.The product was months late, hitting the market just before U.S. Thanksgiving in 2008. Many customers hated it. The touchscreen, RIM’s first, was awkward to manipulate. The product ran on a single processor and was slow and buggy. Mr. Balsillie put on a brave face, declaring the launch to be “an overwhelming success,” but sales lagged the iPhone and customer returns were high.The Storm campaign didn’t seem so disastrous at the time: RIM was in the midst of a torrid global expansion. In August, 2009, Fortune crowned it the world’s fastest-growing company. A year after the Storm launch, market research firm comScore reported that four of the top five smartphones U.S. customers intended to buy in the next three months were BlackBerrys.But the Storm had failed to give Verizon Wireless the Apple-killer it coveted, and RIM soon abandoned the product. So the carrier turned to Google Inc. and its new operating system, Android, and built a massive marketing campaign around Motorola’s Droid phone in 2009 – at the expense of marketing dollars to support BlackBerry products. Verizon’s “iDon’t” campaign highlighted all the shortcomings of the iPhone that Android addressed with its consumer-friendly user interface.Rather than hurt Apple, the Droid and other Android-powered phones began to steal share first from Palm and Microsoft, and then RIM. By December, 2010, Android’s market share in the U.S. had grown to 23.5 per cent from 5.2 per cent a year earlier, as RIM’s dropped by 10 points, to 31.6 per cent, according to comScore. By late 2011, Android commanded 47.3 per cent of the U.S. market, while RIM had just 16 per cent.A shift by smartphone usersThis post-iPhone period was an era of strategic confusion for RIM. The overall state of the industry “was a bit schizophrenic,” said Patrick Spence, RIM’s former executive vice-president of global sales, who left in 2012. “There was a time when the [wireless] carriers tried to keep data usage predictable. Then it shifted to a period of trying to drive much more usage in different packages, when the iPhone became compelling.”If there were new rules of the game, RIM would require new tools. The summer after the Storm launched, Mr. Lazaridis bought Torch Mobile, a software development firm that created Internet browsers for mobile phones.But the process of moving, or “porting,” the Torch browser onto RIM’s highly-customized system proved complex and time-consuming. RIM’s technology was based on Java computer code and an operating system built in the 1990s, while the Apple and Android systems used newer software platforms and standards that made it easier to build friendlier user interfaces. “This really meant we were not positioned for the future,” Mr. Lazaridis said. In order to survive, RIM would have to change its DNA.RIM executives figured they had time to reinvent the company. For years they had successfully fended off a host of challengers. Apple’s aggressive negotiating tactics had alienated many carriers, and the iPhone didn’t seem like a threat to RIM’s most loyal base of customers – businesses and governments. They would sustain RIM while it fixed its technology issues.But smartphone users were rapidly shifting their focus to software applications, rather than choosing devices based solely on hardware. RIM found it difficult to make the transition, said Neeraj Monga, director of research with Veritas Investment Research Corp. The company’s engineering culture had served it well when it delivered efficient, low-power devices to enterprise customers. But features that suited corporate chief information officers weren’t what appealed to the general public.“The problem wasn’t that we stopped listening to customers,” said one former RIM insider. “We believed we knew better what customers needed long term than they did. Consumers would say, ‘I want a faster browser.’ We might say, ‘You might think you want a faster browser, but you don’t want to pay overage on your bill.’ ‘Well, I want a super big very responsive touchscreen.’ ‘Well, you might think you want that, but you don’t want your phone to die at 2 p.m.’ “We would say, ‘We know better, and they’ll eventually figure it out.’ ”Trying to satisfy its two sets of customers – consumers and corporate users – could leave the company satisfying neither. When RIM executives showed off plans to add camera, game and music applications to its products to several hundred Fortune 500 chief information officers at a company event in Orlando in 2010, they weren’t prepared for the backlash that followed. Large corporate customers didn’t want personal applications on corporate phones, said a former RIM executive who attended the session.Meanwhile, it turned out consumers didn’t care so much about battery life or security features. They wanted apps. Apple’s iOs and Google’s Android systems were relatively easy for outside software developers to use, compared to BlackBerry’s technically complicated Java-based system.Blackberry’s apps looked “uglier” than those programmed in more modern languages, and the simulator used to test the apps often didn’t recreate the actual experience, said Trevor Nimegeers, a Calgary-based entrepreneur whose software company, Wmode, has developed apps for BlackBerry. Further, RIM exerted tight control over developers before it would sign off on their apps for use on BlackBerrys, stifling creativity. “Developers wanted to be embraced, not controlled,” Mr. Nimegeers said. As a result, hot apps such as Instagram and Tumblr bypassed BlackBerry.A split companyOne key to RIM’s early success was its corporate structure. It is unusual for a company to have two CEOs – Mr. Lazaridis focused on engineering, product management and supply chain, while Mr. Balsillie looked after sales, finance and other corporate functions – but for a long time, it worked. Mr. Lazaridis’s side of the shop made the phones, and Mr. Balsillie’s sold them. The two men were collegial and collaborative.Below the top executives, however, the two sides of the company didn’t always get along. And as the company grew into a leviathan with $20-billion in annual sales, the structure sometimes made it difficult to get definitive decisions or establish clear accountability. That contributed to a chronic problem for RIM: speed. “They were always slow to market, and there were always delays in launching,” said James Moorman, an analyst with S&P Capital IQ Equity Research. “It was compounded by miscalculating the speed at which the consumer market changed.”Sometimes, feedback from customers that might inspire changes would die at middle management, because senior executives didn’t want to bring it to Mr. Lazaridis, a former insider said.The split company also lost a major unifying force when chief operating officer Larry Conlee retired in 2009. Mr. Conlee was a whip-cracker who held executives to account for decisions and deadlines, establishing a project management office. Many insiders agreed that after he left, a slack attitude toward hitting targets began to permeate the company. “There was a gap” after Mr. Conlee’s departure, Adam Belsher, a former RIM vice-president, told The Globe last year. “There was no real operational executive on the product side that would really get teams to hit deadlines.”After relying on its own technology for so long, Mr. Lazaridis decided the company’s next advance would come from outside. In April, 2010, RIM announced a deal to acquire Ottawa-based QNX Software, a cutting-edge software maker that would provide the building blocks for the BlackBerry 10 operating system – the new platform Mr. Lazaridis knew the company needed.QNX was a specialist in industrial controls that used up-to-date software tools to run applications ranging from 911 call centres to wireless broadband services in vehicles. Its technology was the perfect core for smartphones and tablets, RIM’s leaders felt.Mr. Lazaridis decided to take a page from the business strategy book The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen. The book outlines how established organizations that succeeded against challengers often did so by allowing small, cloistered teams to develop their own disruptive products, free from the influence of the rest of the organization.Mr. Lazaridis decided he would isolate the QNX team and get them to focus solely on the new operating system, while leaving existing programmers to work on products for its existing platform, BlackBerry 7. Eventually he hoped QNX, led by its CEO Dan Dodge, would retrain his entire organization.But first, RIM had to answer a key question: If it wanted to remake the BlackBerry on the QNX system, what was the best way to do that? Should it move over some of its old Java-based applications, or rewrite them all from scratch? If the company abandoned Java altogether, what would it mean for third-party developers who used it?These were not easy decisions. Discussions among the senior leaders in Mr. Lazaridis’ organization dragged on for a year – far too long, according to several insiders.Eventually, the decision was made: BlackBerry 10 would be built from scratch. The problem with that approach was that a new team was being entrusted to recreate the BlackBerry. Those who had created the original system were still working on devices for the BlackBerry 7 platform. Once again, the company was split.“We had bought a powerful operating system and needed to move to it. But the BB7 was late,” Mr. Lazaridis said. “Every week, I was getting requests for more hires, more resources. The conundrum was, how do I pull resources off the BB7 to rewrite all the apps on top of QNX?”PlayBook painThe QNX team’s first assignment was to work on an operating system for the PlayBook, RIM’s answer to Apple’s successful iPad tablet. Mr. Lazaridis saw the work as a precursor to the BlackBerry 10 line of smartphones and was impressed by what the team brought to the product. “It helped our developers experience the power and elegance of QNX,” he said.But the QNX team was overwhelmed and needed to draw heavily on the company’s other resources to complete the PlayBook. Similar issues arose later on the BlackBerry 10. The tablet, originally slated to come out in the fall of 2010, didn’t appear until April, 2011, and it failed to sell. It was an awkward accessory to RIM’s smartphones, and lacked e-mail, contacts and apps. Once again, RIM had missed the mark: Tablets that sold well worked as standalone devices, which the PlayBook wasn’t.Some questioned the wisdom of launching the PlayBook in the first place, feeling it was a needless and costly distraction. And the decision to isolate QNX also created tensions and morale problems: Those who weren’t on the team worried about their future.“To me, the most logical thing would have been to integrate the operating system organizations into one,” said one senior executive who was caught up in the fray. “Then you’d have a whole team, not 150 people sitting around saying, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do next,’ and another 150 people saying ‘I’m over my head.’ ”Meanwhile, RIM’s lack of an advanced smartphone meant that it continued to bleed market share to Apple and Android, especially in the United States. In December, 2010, Verizon Wireless announced it would invest in fourth generation (4G) LTE technology to accommodate the growing demands of customers who wanted to surf the Internet on their phones. It signalled to device makers that it would look to feature 4G smartphones in its marketing.RIM’s 4G phone effort was the BlackBerry 10, but it was far from ready. RIM executives tried to make an engineering argument to carriers that 4G technology was no more efficient than 3G, and that its Bold phones were just fine. Mr. Lazaridis, Mr. Heins and chief technology officer David Yach “were trying to reshape the argument because they knew our products couldn’t go there,” a former executive said. “It was a fight to stay in [promotional] programs with carriers. We lost channel support and feature ads.”The PlayBook debacle and mounting delays of the BlackBerry 10 harmed the organization in other ways.For years, Mr. Yach and Mr. Lazaridis had enjoyed a close working relationship. But as the well-regarded Mr. Yach began to question the company’s ability to hit deadlines on products, his views were dismissed and he was made to feel he wasn’t a team player, damaging their relationship, observers said. He left the company in early 2012.The PlayBook flop merely added to the sense of a company in decline; 2011 became a signNow turning point for RIM. As it became clear the brand was getting trounced in the market, and the BlackBerry 10 project was hit by signNow delays, the stock plunged, falling from $69 (Canadian) in February to less than $15 by the year’s end.The pressure mounted on Mr. Balsillie, Mr. Lazaridis and the board. In January, 2012, they stepped aside as co-CEOs and handed it over to Thorsten Heins, a German executive who had run the company’s handset division.Almost immediately, there was division about how to roll out the BlackBerry 10. The original strategy had called for the company to launch an all-touchscreen version first, because sales were still going well for the company’s BlackBerry 7 keyboard phone.But by 2012, sales of BlackBerry 7 phones had lost steam, and Mr. Lazaridis, now deputy chairman, felt the company should switch its priority to getting a keyboard version out, to meet the demand from BlackBerry die-hards.“This is our bread and butter, our iconic device,” he told an executive at the company. “The keyboard is one of the reasons they buy BlackBerrys.”Mr. Heins’s new management team held firm, sources close to the board said. “They believed everything was going to full touch” and that the QNX-designed system was clearly superior to what was available on other mobile operating systems.To Mr. Lazaridis, abandoning the company’s competitive advantage in the hopes consumers would embrace yet another touchscreen was too risky a strategy, setting up the showdown at the board last year. In the end, management agreed to continue developing the Q10 keyboard phone. But the all-touchscreen Z10 would be launched first.By the time the first BlackBerry 10 smartphones were unveiled in January of this year, market observers generally agreed that the products were two years too late – a view widely shared among many senior RIM insiders.“Buying QNX was the right play ultimately,” said Mr. Spence. “But we didn’t make the turn fast enough. Everyone underestimated the complexity” involved in building the new system.A BBM planFor 20 years, Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis operated in tandem, building an increasingly successful partnership that allowed each other’s strengths to flourish.They shared an office in their early years, even possessing each other’s voice mail passwords.As RIM grew, they worked in separate buildings but spoke several times a day. “They had a relationship I wish I had with my wife,” one mid-level executive said.But they had different personalities and their lives seldom intersected outside the office. They have barely spoken since leaving the company.For Mr. Lazaridis, science was both a job and a pastime. Mr. Balsillie was brash, competitive and athletic, and wore his reputation for being aggressive, even bullying in meetings, as a badge of honour. If anything, he viewed that outward toughness as a job requirement, not unlike tech CEOs such as Steve Ballmer at Microsoft Corp. or Apple’s Steve Jobs. “Show me how else you build a $20-billion company,” he once confided to a colleague. “If I was Mr. Easy-going, they would kill BlackBerry.”The two rarely disagreed on key strategic moves – until their last year together. Mr. Lazaridis believed BlackBerry 10 would herald RIM’s renaissance. Mr. Balsillie wasn’t so sure.Mr. Balsillie was concerned that Google had commoditized the smartphone market by making its Android operating system available for free to any handset maker. By 2011, wireless carriers were warning him that they would be ordering fewer BlackBerry products unless he dropped his prices to match rival manufacturers.So Mr. Balsillie pushed an alternative plan.The idea started with Aaron Brown, the executive who oversaw the services division at RIM. By 2010, this division was earning $800-million per quarter in revenue from the monthly service access fee it charged mobile carriers for every BlackBerry subscriber. More than 90 per cent of that was profit. Carriers tried to chip away at those fees – Google and Apple didn’t charge them – but RIM always pushed back. Mr. Balsillie was particularly insistent on keeping the service fees. But the executives knew the company’s weakening position in devices would increase pressure on services revenues as well.Even after its terrible year in 2011, RIM still had several advantages, including close relationships with the world’s major carriers. It also had BlackBerry Messenger.RIM developers created the BBM app in 2005 to enable users to communicate not by e-mail but by using their devices’ “personal identification numbers” or PINs. It was the first instant messaging service built for wireless devices, and it caught on quickly. It was reliable, free, always on and users could send as many messages as they wanted at no extra cost, unlike basic text messages. PINs were random codes, not phone numbers or e-mail addresses, enhancing privacy. That made BBM extremely popular in countries where citizens didn’t enjoy as many freedoms as Western democracies, and helped drive handset sales there.BBM’s developers added a few clever elements that also made it addictive. For example, users would know when a message had been delivered and when it had been read, marked D and R. Today there are 60 million monthly active users.But BBM only worked on BlackBerrys. As Apple and Android took off, BBM knock-offs appeared that could function on those devices, including Kik Interactive Inc., founded by Ted Livingston, a former RIM co-op student. Today Kik, boasts 85 million users, more than BlackBerry (which sued Mr. Livingston for allegedly copying its program). Others, such as WhatsApp, are even larger. Instant messaging “is the killer app of the mobile era,” Mr. Livingston said. “We think there will be a Google or Facebook-sized company that comes out of this category.”RIM’s Mr. Brown believed he could tap into this unfolding trend. While working with Mr. Balsillie on other projects, around late 2010 and early 2011, he began to talk up the concept of offering BBM on other mobile platforms.Mr. Balsillie loved it. At the time, some carriers were pushing for rebates on their monthly service fees. Mr. Brown was willing to comply if the carriers would agree to open new parts of their business to RIM. He and Mr. Balsillie struck upon an idea: Why not give carriers the opportunity to offer BBM to all their customers – no matter what devices they used?Most wireless executives were not fans of instant messaging services and other “over-the-top” apps such as Skype because they eroded the carriers’ revenue from text messaging.To counter that threat, carriers banded together to develop a standardized “rich communication service” (RCS) platform that would enable their customers to exchange text messages, videos, games and other digital information. But the initiative has gained little traction; one commentator recently labelled RCS a “zombie technology.”SMS 2.0Mr. Balsillie began floating the idea that carriers could instead offer BBM as their own enhanced version of text messaging, generating revenue for carriers while providing a cut for RIM. He called it “SMS 2.0.” (SMS stands for “short message service.”) RIM would agree to reduce the fees it charged for services, in exchange for gaining access to hundreds of millions of non-BlackBerry users.He and Mr. Brown discussed several options. For example, carriers could offer BBM as part of a standard “talk and text” plan for entry-level smartphone users. Because of its extra functions, BBM would save customers from having to buy a data plan.Or, carriers could offer an expensive plan that included BBM and other offerings from BlackBerry, including one gigabyte of cloud storage on which they could keep photos or songs. The carriers could then sell extra services such as radio through BBM. It would also make the wireless companies’ customers “stickier” – less likely to defect – since they couldn’t move stored data to rival mobile carriers as easily.The SMS 2.0 plan was a throwback to RIM’s move a decade earlier to form partnerships with mobile providers and share revenues. It was a chance to make BBM the dominant chat messaging service, and would have created a new storyfor the BlackBerry brand.A few carriers responded positively to Mr. Balsillie’s initial entreaties and by mid-2011, he was calling SMS 2.0 the company’s top strategic priority.To round out the strategy, and build a suite of cross-platform services, RIM made a few acquisitions, such as instant messaging firm LiveProfile. The service had about 15 million users and worked on Apple and Android devices, giving BBM the entrée it needed to those platforms.But the plan deeply divided the company. BBM was still an important driver of BlackBerry sales. Making it widely available to competitors represented an added threat to RIM’s faltering handset business, led by Mr. Heins at the time. Many inside the company felt a cross-platform BBM made sense, but only when BlackBerry 10 was out. Mr. Balsillie and proponents of his plan felt that would be too late.“It’s fair to say [the risk to handset sales] was a shared concern of everybody I spoke to,” said former RIM executive Mr. Spence. “But it was hard to deny the fact [carriers’ text messaging] revenue was declining. These carriers were looking for a solution and this was a potential solution.”One former executive felt Mr. Balsillie was overestimating the revenue potential of his software-driven strategy. As Mr. Balsillie talked up SMS 2.0, Mr. Heins and his team increasingly cast doubt on it internally. “He was absolutely canvassing behind the scenes working to kill it,” said one company insider.As for Mr. Lazaridis, he was supportive of launching BBM for rival operating systems, but was concerned about the costs and risks involved in building out the SMS 2.0 strategy, said a source close to the board. “We weren’t in a position to be investing in free services that required massive capital expenditure [and could provide] zero payback for maybe a few years if we’re successful,” the source said. Like others, Mr. Lazaridis worried about handset sales.But Mr. Balsillie was increasingly convinced that SMS 2.0 was the way to go. After pitching the plan to CEOs of 12 of the largest wireless carriers in the world in late 2011, he believed he could sign up at least one major U.S. carrier – insiders say AT&T was interested – as well as Telefonica and one or two other European carriers. That’s all it would take, he felt, to convince others to adopt BBM en masse.But other RIM executives who were part of the growing SMS 2.0 team also encountered resistance.Mr. Balsillie was pushing to formally launch SMS 2.0 at an industry conference at the end of February, 2013. But with the company under mounting pressure to overhaul its top leadership, he and Mr. Lazaridis handed the reins to Mr. Heins in late January.A few weeks later, Mr. Heins killed the SMS 2.0 strategy, backed by Mr. Lazaridis.“We had to get the BlackBerry 10 out, and we couldn’t be distracted,” said a source close to the board. “Everything else was shelved. And if that meant getting rid of strategies that didn’t fit, or weren’t complete, or required resources, I think [Mr. Heins] did the right thing.”The Globe and Mail requested interviews with Mr. Heins and with Barbara Stymiest, the chair of the board. The company declined, but agreed to agreed to provide answers to written questions.Asked why he shelved SMS 2.0, Mr. Heins said in an e-mailed response: “There are so many [instant messaging] alternatives in the marketplace that we wanted to be careful to launch only when we felt we could clearly differentiate our offering.”Mr. Balsillie, no longer an executive but still a board member, urged directors to reconsider, but they backed the new CEO. Mr. Balsillie couldn’t abide by the decision. He resigned from the board in late March, then sold all his stock. Few people knew the reason for his departure, including his long-time co-CEO, Mr. Lazaridis.BlackBerry did launch a version of its BBM application last weekend for iPhones and Android devices, but simply as a stand-alone app. Andrew Bocking, the executive who oversees BBM, said that with built-in capabilities to have group chats, share photos, calendar items and other features, “it really takes BBM to a whole other level … I believe there is an opportunity for a dominant player in instant messaging and there will be one winner-take-all.”To those who championed the SMS 2.0 strategy, most of them now gone, RIM should have been well on its way there already.A fizzled launchFinally, close to six years after Apple unveiled the iPhone, the long-awaited BlackBerry 10 made its debut at a glitzy launch event in January, featuring singer Alicia Keys as the company’s “global creative director.” It was a minor detail in a much larger story, but the made-up title and meaningless job irked some who wondered why the company was distracting itself with celebrity endorsements while in the fight of its life.The Z10 device itself won a number of positive reviews. The New York Times’ David Pogue, who previously had predicted that the BlackBerry was doomed, began his review: “I’m sorry. I was wrong.” But eight months later, it’s hard to see the launch as anything other than a total business failure, given the sheer volume of unsold smartphones now written off.The marketing campaign was confusing and vague: An ad that ran during the Super Bowl failed to explain what made the product distinct. A source close to the board said directors weren’t shown the ad before it ran, and some didn’t understand the content or the slogan, “Keep Moving.” There were no lineups, and no buzz for the product – nothing like the frenzy of publicity that seems to surround the launch of each new version of the iPhone.Once again, the market had shifted, and there was little demand for the Z10 in an era where sophisticated operating systems were commonplace and phones were getting cheaper. The one advantage the BlackBerry may have had over its rivals – a physical keyboard – wasn’t present in the first model to hit the market.“The only people still clamouring for a new smartphone from BlackBerry were in it for the keyboard,” said S&P’s Mr. Moorman. “Then they come out with a touchscreen. Anyone who wanted a touchscreen was already gone.”As it turns out, both Mr. Balsillie and Mr. Lazaridis were proven right. It was hard enough to compete in a commoditizing smartphone market. Leading with the wrong product on top of that only made BlackBerry’s task more hopeless. Mr. Heins’s strategic errors only compounded the challenging situation he had inherited.The product was difficult to sell for other reasons. One company insider said it could take close to an hour for young sales staff to demonstrate the product in dealer stores.And many long-time BlackBerry users found that the new system was too different from the classic BlackBerry experience for their liking. Many of the little “moments of delight,” as they are called in the company, were forgotten or overlooked by the QNX developers who lacked ties to the company’s past. For example, users can’t hit “u” and look at the last unread message in their inbox, nor can they easily shift to the next or previous e-mail, as they could on older BlackBerrys. Pocket-dialling is a constant hazard.Meanwhile, the company was slow to provide service to business users – such as helping them to transfer applications they had written for the old BlackBerry system. Software developers were left with dead-end investments after learning they would have to rewrite their apps for the new system if they wanted to remain part of the BlackBerry world. Many simply didn’t bother.“The decisions we made over the last two years were made within the context of a volatile, competitive and ever-changing marketplace – and always with the goal of delivering the vital technology that our customers need,” Mr. Heins said in a written response to questions about the success of the BlackBerry 10 launch. While he called the launch “a signNow accomplishment and one that involved the reinvention of our company,” he acknowledged it “did not meet our expectations.”As for Mr. Lazaridis, he has not given up on the enterprise he founded 29 years ago.He is still a minority shareholder in BlackBerry, and continues to be the subject of rumours he may join a group to buy out his former company.Mr. Lazaridis declined to discuss any such plans, but it is clear he believes the BlackBerry story is not over.“Many companies go through cycles. Intel experienced it, IBM experienced it, Apple experienced it. Our job was to reinvent ourselves, which we all believed BB10 would do,” he said.“The fact that a Canadian company was able to compete in that space with two of the largest tech companies in the world is a big deal. People counted IBM, Apple and other companies out only to be proven wrong. I am rooting that they are wrong on BlackBerry as well.”
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How do i add an electronic signature to a word document?
When a client enters information (such as a password) into the online form on , the information is encrypted so the client cannot see it. An authorized representative for the client, called a "Doe Representative," must enter the information into the "Signature" field to complete the signature.
How to use electronic signature paint?
Here is how to use electronic signature paint:
1. Get started in this tutorial, and follow all steps.
2. Take your digital signature and print it on a piece of paper, paper that is not too thick. You can use a regular paper for that. We recommend paper with the same color as your skin, as it will ensure that your signature will be easy to see. If your signature does not fit on your paper, it will be very difficult to see on it.
3. Get a paint marker. You would be surprised how much this costs, and for good reasons. We've found cheap paint markers at local craft shops. If you can't make these yourself, then get a good brand like Tacky or Wet N' Wild. You can buy these at local craft stores, or you can buy them online. We buy ours at , where it costs just $ for a ounce bottle.
4. After you've purchased and used a paint marker, take that paint marker to a surface that is not too slick for ink to adhere to, and lightly paint your digital signature onto it. This will not be too messy, and it is a good idea to paint lightly, since the thicker the paint, the more ink that will be needed.
5. Place your signature on the paper that you want your digital signature on, such as a piece of newspaper.
6. Using the tip of the paint marker, apply very light pressure to the paper with a very light stroke. The lighter your stroke, the harder it will be to see. You want it to be very lightly brushed, without the brush leaving any ink on the paper.
7. Remove the paper from the paper hol...
How to sign pdf sumatra?
(12:08:53 AM) jonnitha: ok (12:08:59 AM) gmxgeek: thanks for responding (12:09:04 AM) lebomb: thanks (12:09:06 AM) lebomb: i've been waiting :D (12:09:23 AM) jonnitha: lol that's cool (12:09:36 AM) gmxgeek: i was wondering if there is more you might be willing to post (12:13:01 AM) lebomb: what I've been working on is the sumatra documentation (12:13:11 AM) lebomb: (12:17:12 AM) sumatra[BRAVE Cap Command] [webchat@ ] entered the room. (12:18:08 AM) lebomb: you might want to add the "subscribe" link from the bottom of every page (12:18:15 AM) lebomb: so people can unsubscribe (12:18:26 AM) sumatra[BRAVE Cap Command] left the room. (12:18:34 AM) lebomb: it also links to the "about" page (12:18:41 AM) sumatra[BRAVE Cap Command]: i didn' t realise that was possible atm (12:18:44 AM) lebomb: and is easy to remove (12:18:46 AM) sumatra[BRAVE Cap Command]: but yea, that's probably better to not do now (12:18:59 AM) gmxgeek: leb, that's all good stuff (12:19:10 AM) lebomb: but there is also this "about" section (12:19:27 AM) lebomb: which has a link to the documentation (12:21:12 AM) Sumatra[BRAVE Cap Command]: the thing is, it's not in the docs but it's there, so I don't think it's a big deal (12:21:20 AM) sumatra[BRAVE Cap Command]: but you can always go to and add it to there (12:21:33 AM) lebomb: yeah, that's fine, thanks (12:21:42
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