Mike Lazaridis And Its Impact On Society
Mike Lazaridis “Always try to build something special, it’s part of this decision to build important things and have an impact on society.” Is a quote from Mike Lazaridis. He is a famous entrepreneur yet as a name he is not well known, you might recognize him more for the famous wireless handheld device known as the Blackberry, co-founder of Quantum Valley Investments and founder of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. One of the things Mike is known as is a “passionate advocate”.
Mike was always fascinated even at a young age by how things worked, him and his friends spent hours in the basement building rockets, radios and many other things. At the age of 12 Mike Lazaridis won an award for reading every science book
in the Windsor Public Library. In highschool he took science courses to set himself up for university. In 1979 Mike was enrolled at the University of Waterloo where he started his career off by creating Research In Motion (RIM) which changed everything with the creation of the Blackberry with the help of a childhood friend who was also enrolled at the University named Doug Fregin.
RIM, which was established as an electronics and computer science consulting business, RIM then focused on developing technology for wireless sending of data, such as email and text messages. At this point, RIM was awarded a $600 000 contract by General Motors. In 1992 Mike Lazaridis was joined by a new CEO for RIM and expanded from a small company with approximately 10 workers to a worldwide company worth $68 billion by the end of 2007.
Apple and the iPhone were also introduced that year. RIM continued to move at a pace and grow and ended up reaching $20 billionin sales during 2011. RIM's growth began to slow down due to Iphones and android and new consumers began buying lower-end devices and by the end of 2011, close to 60% of RIM's sales came from countries other than Canada, the US and the UK, where iPhones and Android had become more popular than Blackberry. After months of pressure and losing money Mike Lazaridis retired from the company he had started but still kept his foot in the door with the computer and science industry with a new company he and Doug Fregin had started shortly after called Quantum Valley Investments fund that supports quantum computing ventures that is now worth over $100-million.
Mike was always fascinated even at a young age by how things worked, him and his friends spent hours in the basement building rockets, radios and many other things. At the age of 12 Mike Lazaridis won an award for reading every science book
in the Windsor Public Library. In highschool he took science courses to set himself up for university. In 1979 Mike was enrolled at the University of Waterloo where he started his career off by creating Research In Motion (RIM) which changed everything with the creation of the Blackberry with the help of a childhood friend who was also enrolled at the University named Doug Fregin.
RIM, which was established as an electronics and computer science consulting business, RIM then focused on developing technology for wireless sending of data, such as email and text messages. At this point, RIM was awarded a $600 000 contract by General Motors. In 1992 Mike Lazaridis was joined by a new CEO for RIM and expanded from a small company with approximately 10 workers to a worldwide company worth $68 billion by the end of 2007.
Apple and the iPhone were also introduced that year. RIM continued to move at a pace and grow and ended up reaching $20 billionin sales during 2011. RIM's growth began to slow down due to Iphones and android and new consumers began buying lower-end devices and by the end of 2011, close to 60% of RIM's sales came from countries other than Canada, the US and the UK, where iPhones and Android had become more popular than Blackberry. After months of pressure and losing money Mike Lazaridis retired from the company he had started but still kept his foot in the door with the computer and science industry with a new company he and Doug Fregin had started shortly after called Quantum Valley Investments fund that supports quantum computing ventures that is now worth over $100-million.