Losing the Signal: The Untold Story behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry

[Read by William Hughes]

In 2009 BlackBerry controlled half of the smartphone market. Today that number is 1 percent. What went so wrong? Expertly told by acclaimed journalists Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff, this is an entertaining, whirlwind narrative that goes behind the scenes to reveal one of the most compelling business stories of the new century.

Losing the Signal is a riveting story of a company that toppled global giants before succumbing to the ruthlessly competitive forces of Silicon Valley. This is not a conventional tale of modern business failure by fraud and greed. The rise and fall of BlackBerry reveals the dangerous speed at which innovators race along the information superhighway.

With unprecedented access to key players, senior executives, directors, and competitors, Losing the Signal unveils the remarkable rise of a company that started above a bagel shop in Ontario. At the heart of the story is an unlikely partnership between a visionary engineer, Mike Lazaridis, and an abrasive Harvard Business School grad, Jim Balsillie. Together they engineered a pioneering pocket email device that became the tool of choice for presidents and CEOs. The partnership enjoyed only a brief moment on top of the world, however. At the very moment BlackBerry was ranked the world's fastest-growing company, internal feuds and chaotic growth crippled the company as it faced its gravest test: Apple and Google's entry into mobile phones.

''In the tech industry, they say that you learn more from a failure than from a hit. Well, if that's true, Losing the Signal will give you a post-doctoral education. Reading the inside story of the BlackBerry's helpless flame-out is like watching any other train wreck: You're horrified, but you can't look away.'' --David Pogue, Author of POGUE'S BASICS and founder of Yahootech.com

''In Losing the Signal, Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff tell the harrowing and riveting story of how we lost the connection to the Blackberry, a communication device so innovative and addictive that it was known, among aficionados, as a Crackberry. It's a tale of rivalries, jealousies and missed opportunities. You won't be able to put it down.'' --William Cohan, author of House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street and Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World

''Losing the Signal tells of the marriage and divorce of Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, how two opposites built RIM into a world-beater and how they lost it. This is first-class reporting that reads like a juicy novel, with one amazing story after another. A terrific book.'' --Howard Green, author of Banking on America

JACQUIE MCNISH is a senior writer with the Globe and Mail and before that the Wall Street Journal. She has won seven National Newspaper Awards and is the author of three best-selling books, two of which won the National
Business Book award. She lives in Toronto with her husband and two sons.

SEAN SILCOFF is a business writer with the Globe and Mail and a two-time National Newspaper Award winner. He lives near Ottawa with his wife and three children.