The $83 Billion Empire That Failed to See the iPhone Coming.

January 9, 2007: Mike Lazaridis watched the iPhone keynote and knew instantly what it meant. His co-CEO Jim Balsillie watched the same nine minutes and said five words — "It's OK, we'll be fine." Both were right. That gap cost BlackBerry $83 billion. The full story of Research In Motion: two Waterloo engineering students, a private wireless network banks and governments trusted, and a keyboard of tiny black keys that turned into the CrackBerry era. In 2008 RIM held 46% of the global smartphone market. By 2013 it held 1.1% of US sales — while subscribers were still climbing to 80 million. Inside: the BlackBerry Storm disaster, the PlayBook that shipped without email, Thorsten Heins' "nothing wrong with the company" interview, and the quiet $200M QNX deal now running inside 255 million cars. Did you thumb-type on a BlackBerry? Tell us the model in the comments.