📉 RIP BlackBerry

As a Canadian, this hurts to say: come tomorrow, BlackBerry phones are gone for good.

The company will shut down text, data, and voice functionality on legacy devices.

It’s an anticlimactic end to one of the biggest corporate downfalls in recent memory.

Blame the iPhone?

When Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone in January 2007, many industry players were skeptical.

Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer mocked it for being overpriced and lacking a keyboard. He predicted it would fail.

Meanwhile, BlackBerry — founded and manufactured by Ontario-based Research in Motion (RIM) — had 10% of the smartphone market (and would rise to 20% in 2009).

BlackBerry pioneered…

… on-the-go communication and email with its keyboard-enabled phones. According to The Verge, its success laid the foundation for its fall:

• Form factor: BlackBerry’s calling card was its keyboard and the company missed the touch screen revolution (spearheaded by Apple). To compound the mistake, it bet the future of mobile on Flash and its mobile OS faltered.
• Lack of consumer focus: BlackBerry’s core business was with corporate and government customers, who relied on its security and email. The company was content catering to this crowd and missed billions of regular future consumers.
• Missed opportunity: BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) was a very popular messaging service, which did attract consumers. However, BlackBerry locked the service to its device. WhatsApp — acquired by Facebook for $19B in 2014 — showed the value of cross-platform messaging.

BlackBerry peaked at 50m+ units in 2011

But the touch screen freight train — led by iPhones and Android smartphones (e.g., Samsung, HTC etc.) — ran it over.

In 2013, the company renamed from RIM to BlackBerry (spoiler alert: this didn’t change its fortunes).

By 2016, it shut down its smartphone manufacturing business. Today, BlackBerry has pivoted into a software firm — valued at $5B+ — that primarily sells cybersecurity.

Meanwhile, Apple has sold ~2B iPhones and is the world’s most valuable firm (*pours out some maple syrup*).

Air travel is kind of a mess currently.

Since Dec. 24, ~15k flights have been canceled across the US, per USA Today. On Sunday, 2.5k+ US flights had already been dumped by afternoon, per FlightAware.

There are 2 big causes:

• Bad weather
• Staffing shortages due to COVID-19

Thanks to the omicron variant, the US broke its record for average new cases last week at 355k+ infections per day, per CNN.

The cancellations are affecting airline stocks

While the S&P 500 Airlines Index improved in early 2021, the sector took a hit with the delta and omicron variants. Since Oct. 1, it’s dropped ~18%, per Fortune.

After Christmas weekend — during which 2.8k+ US flights were canceled — United Airlines and Delta Air Lines both fell 0.7%, while American Airlines dipped 0.9%.

There’s also been some controversy

The CDC recently changed the isolation window for those with COVID-19 from 10 days to 5 — which is what Delta Air Lines suggested in a letter to CDC director Rochelle Walensky.

Walensky told NPR the decision was, in part, to keep society’s “critical functions” — like airlines — in operation.

She also noted that while the virus is typically passed on in the 1st days of infection, masking is essential on days 5 through 10.

Who’s mad about this? Nurses, plus flight attendants, who say they’re already dealing with an uptick in violent passenger outbursts over mask guidelines.

BTW: Having travel FOMO? You could always check out FlightAware’s Misery Map, which visualizes cancellations and delays.

1) Around 75k people and companies received a Christmas gift when Santander Bank accidentally deposited $176m into their accounts. Unfortunately, the gift was short-lived, and the bank — which recovered the funds — quickly devolved from Santa to Grinch.

2) Speaking of… Usually, Christmas tree records have something to do with height or lights. This Christmas, though, researchers at the Technical University of Denmark used graphene to construct a Christmas “tree” 14 centimeters long — and 1 atom thin.

3) In 2021, 6 jackpots worth a combined $2B were drawn for Powerball’s lottery. It’s important to remember, these prices reflect what you’d get as an annual payment made out over 29 years. Most winners chose a one-time, reduced payment option. What would you choose?

4) Rentbrella — which, as you might expect, rents umbrellas — now operates 35 NYC umbrella kiosks holding 3.5k umbrellas, with 100 kiosks planned for next year. The business model is interesting: If you return an umbrella within 24 hours, it’s completely free.

5) Indian startups are on fire (the good kind). VC put into Indian companies jumped to ~$39B in 2021 — far higher than the previous record of $14.6B in 2019 — and helped spawn 44 new Indian unicorns.