Firebrand win EC-Council Accredited Training Centre of the Year 2016

As part of the EC-Council Global Awards 2016, Firebrand Training has been named Accredited Training Centre of the Year (Europe). This extends a record breaking achievement to an eighth successive year, a reflection of our continued dedication to delivering excellence and quality across our full range of accelerated EC-Council courses. 

This includes the globally recognised Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) and exciting new Certified Chief Information Security Officer (CCISO) certifications. 

Firebrand Lead Instructor for EC-Council courses, Richard Millet, was also recognised in the EC-Council Circle of Excellence. This is the fourth time Richard has been honoured for his achievements by EC-Council - being named previously as Instructor of the Year in 2014 and entering the instructor Circle of Excellence in 2011 and 2015.

Speaking about the awards, Firebrand Training Co-Founder, Robert Chapman said:

"We are immensely proud to be named EC-Council Accredited Training Centre of the Year for the eighth year in succession. Here at Firebrand, we pride ourselves on providing accelerated learning of the highest calibre. Our aim is to quickly develop the vital skills and knowledge our customers need to defend their business from the growing cyber threat. 

To be recognised by EC-Council is an honour and shows we continue to deliver on our promise."

Jay Bavisi, President of EC-Council, gave his opinion on the awards:

"We have some of the best training organisations representing EC-Council across the globe and they have again demonstrated the commitment to high quality training, winning them awards again this year."

How the awards were won

Chosen from over 700 training centres, 107 countries and a wide range of EC-Council certified instructors, Firebrand proved its distinction in picking up the Accredited Training Centre of the Year award (Europe) and Instructor Circle of Excellence (Europe) award. Firebrand and Richard Millet met the extensive and rigorous criterion EC-Council have in place to be awarded as the best in Europe in both of these categories.

The Accredited Training Centre of the Year award seeks to acknowledge training centres that provide the greatest level of information security training. Some of these courses include EC-Council’s flagship Certified Ethical Hacker, the Computer Hacking Forensics Investigator, the Network Security Administrator and the ECSA.

The Instructor Circle of Excellence (Europe) award acknowledge instructors that epitomise the industry's best practices, while raising standards and contributing to a growing body of knowledge surrounding information security. 

Offering the latest EC-Council courses

As an official EC-Council training partner, Firebrand offers the very latest accelerated certification courses. This includes the recent addition of the CCISO certification, for which Firebrand were selected as the launch partner for England.

This CCISO course is aimed at developing the next generation of senior-level information security executives. The credential focuses on developing the technical skills needed of a Chief Information Security Officer, while also teaching the application of information security management principles from an executive management viewpoint. 

the valuations of these biggest top 10 sports team will shock you

The biggest Sport team based on valuations . Real Madrid Football Club followed by Dallas Cowboys and New York Yankees are amongts the biggest brands in sports with the highest valuation.However 2016 rankings saw Dallas Cowboys replacing Real Madrid as the NFL franchises make up 27 of the 50 most valuable sports teams in the world. Dallas Cowboys, with a valuation of $4 billion is ranked first. It is the first time a non-soccer club has reigned as the most valuable team since 2010 (the first year Forbes compiled a top 50 list). Manchester United held the crown from 2010 to 2012 and Real Madrid the last three years.

pharma brands with the highest media spends on advertising

Pharma Giants and Their spends on advertising and marketing

25 largest Pharma advertisers in US

 1)Pfizer :Most advertised brand Lipitor
2) Eli Lily: Most advertised brand :Cialis 3)Astrazenca :Most advertised brand :Symbicort 4)Glaxosmithkline :Most advertised brand:Advair 5)Bristol Myer Squibb: Most advertised brand:: Ablify 6)Merck :: Most advertised brand:  Singulair 7)Johnson and Johnson:most advertised brand : Simponi Click below to continue

8)Allergan :Restasis  9)Abott Labs:Trilipix 10)Roche:Boniva 11)Takeda Pharma:Uloric 12) Sanofi Aventis:Lantus 13)Daininippon :Lunesta 14)Boehringer Ing: Spiriva 15)Novartis:Reclast

comparison of features :mobile device management (mdm) softwares

Mobile Device Management | SoftwareInsider

 Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions allow organizations to extend their security network to employee and company owned mobile devices, most notably smartphones and tablets.With the recent advances in mobile technology and connectivity, it’s more important than ever that employees have the ability to access company data securely from anywhere and on any device: personal or work, in an airport lobby or at the office.

Among a sample of 308 companies using MDM software, compiled by softwareinisder, shows that the largest portion (27.6%) of companies had between 1001 and 5000 employees, with the smallest portion belonging to companies with 501-1000 employees (figure on left). It’s interesting to note that smaller companies (51-200 employees) made up a larger portion of the customers than midsize companies (200-500 employees).

web conferencing software's compared : skype vs go to meeting vs webex

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Web Conferencing | SoftwareInsider

The above chart shows the comparison between web conferencing sofwares. GoTo Meeting, Teamviewer and webex .In general, web conferencing is made possible by Internet technologies, particularly on TCP/IP connections. Services may allow real-time point-to-point communications as well as multicast communications from one sender to many receivers. It offers data streams of text-based messages, voice and video chat to be shared simultaneously, across geographically dispersed locations

Ericsson demonstrated the very first trans-Atlantic LME video telephone call that companies saw the real potential for success and profitability and began to refine their own video conferencing technologies. Advancements such as Network Video Protocol (NVP), in 1976, and the Packet Video Protocol (PVP), in 1981, both helped the maturation of video conferencing, but both stayed in the laboratory or for private corporate usage.

cloud based customer relation management softwares compared

CRM (Customer Relationship Management) Software | SoftwareInsider

  Cloud based customer relation management software compared

cisco set to fire 7% of its workforce ,as enterprise customers moves to remote data centres

Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO) Annual Headcount & Growth Rate 

Cisco Systems is set to layoff 5,500 employees as the hardware giant has started to face the heat , as its  corporate customers are starting to rely on cloud and remote data centers for their computing needs instead of online networks maintained on their own premises.Cisco is trying to rapidly adapt to technology changes that have reduced demand for its main products.The implication of this would be that 7% of of Cisco's roughly 74,000 workers will lose their jobs.
Cisco is now focusing more on equipment tailored for large data centers and pouring more resources into software and security. The new emphasis is being orchestrated by CEO Chuck Robbins, who replaced the Cisco's long-time leader, John Chambers, nearly 13 months ago.

Cisco itself has previously laid off 6,000 workers in 2014 after letting go 4,000 employees in 2013.

the role of telecom in the android success story

The role of telecom carries in The Android success Story: After Android’s release Andy Rubin, designed a partnership that Was more carrier friendly than iphone, On both Apple and Android, developers make 70% of the revenue from selling the apps . But whereas apple takes the remaining 30%, while Android decided to give this away to the carriers. This was Google’s masterstroke, as carriers eventually got to benefit from every android activation and every aps sold. For carriers it also enabled them to use this money to and make the network more robust and powerful. For Google, if it wanted Android to be successful, This was a small price to pay for what “Android had in mind .

As the number of android handsets started to rise, consumers started to use ? Google’s search engine and YouTube, which meant more mobile traffic, which meant more ads, more advertisers signing up, which untimely lead to higher advertising revenue . From the time Andy Rubin conceptualised the android it was written, keeping in mind that the future of internet would be through mobile devices, while iPhone’s software was designed to require internet connections to PC, while Android was made with the assumption that everyone would be using their smartphone and smaller handheld as their primary internet and computing device

The lesser known history of Patent wars:Orginal Creators who faded into history

 

1)The number of patents in US 2010 numbers  was 315,000, in 2010 which rose to 577,000 in 2012.  By the time of apple and Samsung patent  went to war over the iPhone features,the typical wait for a patent decision rose from 25 months in 2000 to 33 months in 2012. One of the most controversial patent was the example of amazon’s buy now with 1 click button on amazon.com.Very few know that Amazon has patent on that feature "buy with 1 click" which means that no company or eCommerce firm can copy and use its feature unless it  pays a license fee to Amazon. One of the biggest companies that uses this feature and even pays a license fee to amazon is apple, which licensed it in 2000, for use in iTunes and app store 

2.) Similarly Alexander Graham bell and Elisha Grey fought for a decade on who had the rights to be called as an inventor of telephone. Both Grey and bell filed their patents to USTPO .On the same day, however Bell’s was the 5th application of the day, while Grey’s was thirty ninth.. The USTPO ignored the fact that “ Gray’s application required to be put on hold as to compare with Bell’s patent application. Despite over six hundred filed over the case, and what was an obvious oversight , the courts sided with Graham bell and he became the original founding father of “ Telephone “

3. The Wright brothers spend a decade defending their Patent that controlled the method of flight. This famous case brought against them by aviation pioneer Glen Curtis lasted over 4 years , however during the world war I, the US needed planes to go to war and ultimately forced its industry to pool its talent and create cross licensing agreements 4. Similarly the inventor of Laser, Gordon Gould was unfamiliar with the process of filings patents. By the time he applied for one,his ideas were already patented by physicist Charles Townes.Meanwhile Gould  spend next 30 years fighting in case against Charles to get legal rights for LASER.. This was so expensive that he ultimately spent 80% of his royalties in court costs

Why CISSP is a must have certification, now more than ever

ISC²'s CISSP course is essential if your pursuing a senior role in Information Security. CISSP provides an extensive overview of the Common Body of Knowledge (CBK): a compendium of information security practices and standards compiled and continually updated by (ISC)².

CISSP is integral in developing an extensive understanding of information security and has gained importance as a key component in the selection process for management-level information security positions. But, for those that are unfamiliar, here are the top reasons why CISSP is the certification to choose, now more than ever.

1. Worldwide recognition:

A certification is only as good as the recognition attached to it. Unlike many standard certs, CISSP boasts industry wide recognition, acknowledged in 2015 by SC Magazine (for the fifth time) as the ‘Best Professional Certification Program’.

This Gold Standard credential is not only recognised by the world’s leading multinationals - such as Google, IBM and P&G - it’s also deemed a requirement in 56% of cyber jobs in the contracting industry. If you’re looking to take on the complicated world of IT security, a CISSP certification is a must have.

2. Job competence:

In the 2015 (ISC)² Global Workforce Study, the report found that the attributes that best characterise ‘successful’ information security professionals came down to a broad understanding of the security field, communication skills and awareness of the latest security threats. 

2015 (ISC)² Global Information Security Workforce Study

CISSP’s core content, seen in the domains listed below, actively seeks to develop this wide range of information and security management. The CISSP CBK consists of the following eight domains:

• Security and Risk Management: Addresses a broad spectrum of general information security and risk management topics.

• Asset Security: Addresses the collection, handling and protection of information throughout its life cycle. 

• Security Engineering: Is the practice of building information systems and related architecture that continue to deliver the required functionality in the face of threats that may be caused by malicious acts. 

• Communication and Network Security: Encompasses the network architecture, transmission methods, transport protocols, control devices and the security measures used to maintain the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information transmitted over both private and public communication networks. 

• Identity and Access Management: Involves provisioning and managing the identities and access used in the interaction of humans and information systems, of disparate information systems and even between individual components of information systems. 

• Security Assessment and Testing: Involves the evaluation of information assets and associated infrastructure using various tools and techniques for the purposes of identifying and mitigating risk. 

• Security Operations: Involves the application of information security concepts and best practices to the operation of enterprise computing systems.

• Software Development Security: Involves the application of security concepts and best practices to production and development software environments. 

The Global Workforce study also compares the job roles of (ISC)² members versus non-members. 

The findings show those with an (ISC)² certification such as CISSP, although in possession of a wide range of information, are more likely to take on specialised job roles. Examples of such specialist positions include Security Consultant, Security Architect, Information Assurance Manager or Security Advisor. Nannette Ripmeester, founder of Expertise in Labour Mobility, believes these “specific skills are valued more [by employers] because they are more difficult to teach”. Non-members, however, are more likely to have generalist IT roles such as Network Administrator, Security Systems Administrator or Technical Consultant. 

3. (ISC)² Membership:

Once you have completed an (ISC)² certification and subject to annual maintenance fees, you become an (ISC)² member. This membership offers plenty of resources and benefits that can help further your knowledge and network. Some of these include:

• Access to a vast network: With over 110,000 members across 160 countries, you will gain access to other CISSP certified individuals and the shareable knowledge of this community. 

• The opportunity to earn CPEs - critical for maintaining your certification in good standing

• Discounts on industry conferences and access to free online events. 

• Access to industry-leading research: Includes the ISC Journal and the Global Information Security Workforce Study. 

• Security central: An exclusive resource that researches and tracks vulnerabilities using proprietary, state-of-the-art algorithms to aggregate, categorise and prioritise vulnerabilities affecting tens of thousands of products.

• Industry recognition: An event acknowledging distinguished information security professionals. 

• Digital badges: Allows you to share your credentials online through the use of a badge.

4. Earning potential:

The CISSP certification proves you have the advanced skills, knowledge and commitment required, to command higher wages.

The challenging standards require students to have at least 5 years of experience in two of the eight (ISC)² domains listed above. Additionally, the student must complete a 250 question multiple choice exam in order to be officially certified.

Although a difficult process, requiring students to fully understand the CBK and framework of information security practices and standards, the return on investment makes it one of the most highly sought after courses available. 

Those with a CISSP certification command an average an salary of £76,700, compared with £62,500 for similar job titles without a CISSP certification.

5. Growing demand for Security Professionals/Higher spending on IT security:

CISSP has and is likely to always remain a well-performing certification, but what makes it so special today?

As businesses become increasingly dependent on information technology, the importance of cyber security has never been so important. Cybersecurity Ventures projects $1 trillion will be spent globally on cyber security from 2017 to 2021. Editor-In-Chief, Steve Morgan, stated that “IT analyst forecasts are unable to keep pace with the dramatic rise in cyber-crime”. Forbes echoed this in a recent article, stating that the booming cyber security market is expected to grow from $75 billion in 2015 to $170 billion by 2020.

Despite the industry experiencing rapid growth, (ISC)² found that by 2019 there will be a shortage of 1.5 million information security professionals. So, not only is CISSP a qualification that can propel your IT career, its current high demand in a growing industry make 2016 the best time to start. 

How samsung lost the opportunity of buying out android before google

Before Google bought andy Rubin’s android, Samsung missed a golden opportunity of buy out and acquire the Mobile OS Android. Reflecting on this Andy Rubin in Fred Vogelstein’s book on the "Dogfight ,how google and Apple went to war and started a revolution" looks back on the day, when he was supposed to give a presentation to Samsung’s headquarters in Seol and what could have changed the smartphone world.

"I walk into a boardroom with my 6 employees,where I was greeted with 20 people on the other side of the board room.. Like a military tribunal the Samsung CEO walks in and  then everyone  takes a seat .Samsung is known to be a extremely hierarchical organization".

During the first few seconds, everyone started at me blank, waiting for the CEO to signal the start of proceedings .Rubin says “ I started pitching the 15 slide presentation on how Android could shake up things in the marketplace. However I only saw blank faces and freezing looks that gaped at me, as the CEO constantly stared  back , almost ready to pounce on me.Once the presentation was over, I was greeted with pin drop silence, you could hear the whirring of the AC, and then what seemed like an hour, after 2 minutes.I heard whispers in Korean amongst the CEO and his deputies followed by another one minute of silence

After a while the CEO says" Are you dreaming ? You and your army of 6 people are going to do this ? Do you think you can invent such a thing. Which Phone maker will buy this ? This happened 2 weeks before Google bought Android.Then suddenly one fine day, Rubin says that his the phone rings and it was the Samsung Ceo on the other side  “ I demand that you immediately fly over to seol to discuss your very very interesting and revolutionary idea , which you presented us when you were in Seoul. To google’ credit, It did not take long enough for them to understand the the future of internet is going to be mobile.

puma vs adidas : the family feud that led to biggest 2 sportswear brands

The Biggest Sports wear brand today  Adidas and Puma were actually founded by 2 brothers, Adolf Adi Dassler and Rudolf Dassler in the Bavarian city of of Herzogenaurach.The company founded by 2 brothers “Gebrüder Dassler Schuhfabrik” had made shoes for legendary athlete Jesse Owens during the Berlin Olympics in 1936  before the brothers separated
However  25 year old company  in the mid-1940s   broke up as Rudolf and Adi and set up rival shop across the river Aurach. Adi  Dassler  founded  Adidas, and in 1948 Rudolf  Dassler registered his new company as Puma.

How The Sports  Brands were named :Adolf Adi Dasssler , used a combination of his first and last name ( ADI and DASS) ,while Rudi Dassler initially tried to use his name Rudi, but changed into a more sporty and athletic sounding “Puma" Which in German represented a type of wild and aggressive animal with giant strides,

The tale of the family feud amongst the brothers grew to such extent that it is said , that the first question that would be asked to anyone entering, the town was whose shoes you were wearing. As the place Herzogenaurach became known as “the town of bent necks”

5 things to keep in mind while designing mobile ads

1. Avoid using an image that is long shot or has been shot too close up and use your brand colors in an solid background 2.Avoid using headline that is more than 60 characters, including spaces 3.Use  a call to action like  “click here “send a request ,get it touch.4. If you’re a ecommerce retailers , then you might  want to showcase a new product, use words like explore our latest additions, 5. If your aim is to” acquire subscribers, your call to action can be “ join our mailing list”  likewise , you can use “ find a store nearest to you".Don't expect mobile users to spend time look for alphabets or  searching for drop down forms

 Best Practices in Mobile ad design

Best Practices in Call to action :The call to action should be just a one click away . Don’t force uses and take them to a page that is more than 1 or 2 click away Design your banner from left to right, or top to bottom as the highest visibility of a human eyes starts from the left side and scrolls vertically. Ideally your call to action should be at the bottom or lower right corner . Avoid heavy and too dense landing page with too many words.For most mobile users, their attention is more focused on images rather than text. Highlight “what you think is the core product proposition 

Avoid heavy animated and flash.. At times the internet connectivity is not strong enough to support fancy banners and flash. While designing the ad banners, use minimum file size .Instead of making users go round and round clicking on hyperlinks, use “ catalogue of products or connect with us .Avoid making the form fields to large. Users hesitate to fill up large drawn out form fields

why using flash content is seo unfriendly : 5 reasons

Although Google indexes flash content and follow links since 2008 onwards, the fact remains that Google or for that matter any search engine cannot read what is written within the flash files . We take a look at 5 reasons why using Flash content in your website is considered not fully seo friendly. The most crucial problems with Flash are the missing SEO features: Anchor texts, H,-H2. Tags, bold , strong tags,, alt image attributes even title pages are not very simple to execute in Flash.Developing flash with seo factors in mind is more difficult than doing it in HTML.  

 1)Different content is not on different urls:This is the same problem you have with Ajax related pages. If you have unique frames, movies within movies that appear to be on complete unique portions on the flash site, but there is no way to link them to individual elements 

 

 2)The text breakdown is not clean : Google can index the output files in the .swf to see words and phrases, but in flash, a lot of the text inside is not clean,h1> or <p>. It is jumbled into half phrases for graphical effects and often the output is in a incorrect order. Worse still are text effects that often require breaking words apart into individual letters to animate them. 

 3)Flash gets embedded ; A lot of flash content is only linked to other flash content,wrapped inside the shell flash pages This line of inks where no other intenal or external urls are refrencing the interior content , leads to documents with very low page rank, as the links juice fails to get transferred Even if it manages to stay in the main index , they probably wont rank for anything  

4)Flash does not learnt external links like HTML : A all flash site may get large number of links to the homepage, but the interior page always suffer. When webmasters implement links to embeddable Flash. They normaly point to the html host page , rather than any interior pages withing the Flash

3 explanations why creating microsites are the cardinal sins in seo

Search algorithms specifically favour large, authoritative websites that have a depth of information. This means that at any given day the bigger the site, the url that has the highest and the deepest content has the highest probability to appear in search results, as opposed to a small and  thinly spread out content in the form of a microsite . All search engines give more weightage to big  websites with deep pages  and broad pages with lot of content.This negates the reason of  creating new content as a microsite as it  is less helpful vs adding content across existent site

 

 No matter how well you create your content, you can never replicate the “content “which is on your main website”. As your website is already being seen and indexed by  the the search engines as a website with a  huge reservoir of “quality content, trying to create another site with similar or a few unique content will not get you much traction. A multiple site strategy always split the benefits of the link: A single , quality  link pointing to a page on the main  domain positively influences the entire domain and all the pages associated with it . Because of this fact, it makes more sense if you can preserve a good link” or a new link which you get pointing to the same domain to help boost the rank and value of the pages on it .Also  a new site  will take  time  for  search engines to spider a site , and get ranked in search results. This impacts visibility of a brand on the web 

Additionally, it will take some time to appear in google results. .A clear cut content strategy is a must to create a new micros site notwithstanding, the reason not to develop the same. At times developing content for such a site is quite difficult . Having content or keyword targeted pages on other domains that don’t benefit in terms of content or backlinks is a action in futility.

3 instances when you should not be using a .com as a top level domain

  WHEN NOT TO USE.COM AS YOUR TL DOMAIN :Most of web urls have a .com as a TLD, however in some certain circumstances its better to avoid using a .com as a TLD We take a look into a few special cases when we use TLD other than .com

1) When you own the brand .com already and wish to redirect it to a .tv, .org,.biz possibly for marketing, branding and geographic reasons , to venturing into areas across corporate social activity as a CSR initiative. Additionally, any socially relevant service or addressing the bottom of the pyramid either through a corporate initiative or tying up with a NGO.
2.You can use .gov,.mil,.Edu domains if you belong to the similar category ( for the appropriate organizations and associations )
3) When you are serving a specific geography or a market and are completely focussed on “the local market” without the any intention of venturing into other markets for a long time to come. In such cases country extensions are a great way to get good search ranking. ( co.uk, co.in..br,.fr ,.de ) 4) When your organization is non profit and you are into a social cause, like NGO, charity, helping war veterans, collecting donations for social cause. Under these circumstances you can use a .org. extension

The world wide web 's made of of 92% .com domain as the TLD. Though the top level domain hardy matters in terms of search, however the url is an important  part of online branding as well as social media .

how blackberry founders sabotaged their first tablet "playbook"

 By the spring of 2010, when the iPad was sweeping across the world ,Mike Lazaridis was swept with the urgency to keep up with the tablet craze .The smartphone maker initially  tinkered with the possibility of producing a handheld computer larger that the PDA nut smaller than a PC. However it decided to  launch a 7 inches screen tablet.As the  iPad threatened RIM's  positioning and dominance of its enterprise wireless hand held wireless market, it had to react to iPad. 

With the purchase of   technology company, RIM had a secret weapon, QNX. The QNX OS specialty was creating microkernels , which was a building block of OS ,but not the complete OS . However it  wasn’t efficient on the battery front, which was one of blackberry’s core strength.Compounding the problems was the deadline which was set to the new Playbook launch. This mean that there wasn’t enough time to get the blackberry email on the playbook.For this the email application had to be rewritten as RIM wanted to provide one corporate email from both devices which meant that it also had to update its enterprise software which was deployed with over 25,000 of enterprise customers.Given the deadline to launch the tablet to take on iPad, this was impossible

 The result was that Playbook’s customers also had to own the blackberry if they had to access corporate email, making the device as a accessory to blackberry, which was its Flagship device rather than a standalone tablet. What this  meant  for consumers  to access email at Playbook was perplexing .Among the series of  steps to access corporate email 1)They had to download a bridge software app to their devices.2)set up to pair with the smartphone to its playbook 3)Then users had to wait for several minutes for the bridged email box on their playbook to fill up with their blackberry smartphone email.This had to be repeated every time since the email box vanished from the playbook as soon as the connection was cut If the kept both the devices, bridged for long, the wireless activity drained very quickly

For consumer this was  ridiculous as  in comparison ,the ipad enabled user to access their personal as well as corporate email, at a touch of the screen .What was more perplexing was that “ why did RIM take these cumbersome steps, instead of just giving access to hotmail or Gmail In the book “ "Loosing the connection" which chronicles the fall of blackberry, author Sean Silcof , states that Mike Lazaridis was so enamored with the Bridge concept theta RIM dint bother to develop the capability in time for the launch As apposed to this,the ipad came with the email box. The fascination of the founders with technology without understanding consumers preferences sounded the final obituary of the company

how samsung killed the blackberry star :the inside story

 

As smartphone market gathered crescendo with the launch of iPhone , RIM’s first signs of trouble started in US results.The iPhone's arrival in 2007 dented RIM’s market share but dint slowed its growth. But as Android gained traction,Blackberry showed signs of getting hit. For 7 straight quarters in a row,from late 2008 to 2010 summer RIM recorded revenues of around $2billion for each period followed by a dramatic slide quarter on quarter with sales dramatically falling to $1billion in the quarter ending August 2011. As Android siphoned off market share led by  droves of OEMs which lapped up Android to power their low cost handsets.

For RIM, this was the ultimate death knell. Meanwhile RIM’s share of Verizon’s smartphones sales dropped to a 14% from the last 3 months of 2010 from 60% a year earlier.The drop was also significant at Sprint, which saw blackberry shares fall from 63% to 22% and continuing the disaster ‘ T mobile share of RIM phones dropped from 60% to 18%. Never in the history of RIM it has confronted such a situation.

However another player which changed the dynamics of the smartphone market was Samsung. Samsung was the largest electronics component supplier in the world , which supplied Rivals, RIM and iphone componens for their phones. Due to Samsungs size and scale it could easily outspend, Nokia, RIM and Motorola in terms of Its huge marketing budgets

If Samsung lost a smartphone sale, it made its money by supplying the components to the winner.As a critical supplier, Samsung had access to the latest new technology ,priority on supply and the chance to have a first peek inside its competitor’s hardware. In the book, Loosing the signal, RIM's joint CEO, Jim Balsillie talks about the Samsung marketing budgets  ” In 2010 when I saw the huge splash made by Samsung, and got to know about its huge marketing budget, it have me the chills, and I knew that out crown jewel, Blackberry was now loosing its way to becoming a crackberry.

The advent of jesus phone and how it ended the domination of the people's phone

 The iphone had a cult following even before it was launched and even before a single piece of it was sold.In 2007 the year of Iraq invasion and Paris Hilton’s jail sentence , the jesus phone was launched. Soon after its announcement,The blog Gizmodo dubbed it the Jesus phone ,as Apple for the first time used spiritual overtones for its iPhone launch. Its print and TV ads screamed “ Touching is believing"  showing a finger reaching out in dark to touch the iphone. The visual impact of the sleek iPhone overshadowed its features. Journalists played along its tune, comparing Michael Angelo's Sistine chapel painting of God stretching to touch the finger of Adam. The iPhone’s retail debut was termed iday. The official day when iPhone opened for retail was June 29th 2007 , which was also the day of Roman holiday celebrating the feast of martyred apostles ,St Peter and St Paul.By the time the 'iPhone: finally made it to the market,it had already inspired 11000 in print articles and  generated 69 million of google search

Meanwhile to rivals such as RIM, Motorola, Nokia, the iPhone's  popularity was illogical. Its battery lasted less that 10 hours , it operated on an older slower and second generation network,the network carriers were stretched strained by music, movies and other downloads. This particularly hit RIM hard.After unprecedented success and blitzkrieg growth since 2003 , it faced an adversary it did not understand. According to David Yach .RIM’s chief technology officer ,going by conventional smartphone ecosystem at that time, iPhone should have been a disaster.However the iPhone's masterstroke flipped the raisan de etre of smartphone from something that was functional to a product that was beautiful.

 Meanwhile RIM faced trouble from the carriers front.The carriers would not allow RIM to include more than a simple browser as it would crash its networks. After the iPhone autopsy, Blackberry’s bosses of realised that the ground beneath their feet was shifting. If carriers continued to embrace iPhone inspite of its apps and mutimedia applications chocking their networks. Blackberry’s positioning of efficient and secure email and the long battery life was under threat. In reality Blackberry was actually competing with Mac and not a Nokia.However RIM core market of corporate customers was safe at that time as the iPhone could not match blackberry’s reliable keyboard and in house network delivery of secure emails.However the consumer mass market where Blackberry Pearl was competing, needed a full browser . Blackberry led the smartphone market at that time as it managed to put email in people’s pockets. Now the iPhone was putting the entire internet in its pocket.
Continuing and Compounding matters was the conflict between RIM and and the carriers . Up against AT & T and its exclusive multiyear deal to sell the iPhone, Verizon who was currently RIM’s network provider had little interest in Blackberry’s new plan to counter iPhone by launching a new keyboard with an innovative track pad to take on iPhones touch screen keyboard and by building a larger screen. However Verizon who was caught off guard with the ascendancy of iPhone had little patience with what Mike Lazaridis termed as “ Jesus phone killer’ and wanted blackberry to quickly respond to iphone with similar touch screen, something RIM was not willing to do

Meanwhile Verizon was still smarting from a a lost opportunity to tie up with iphone 2 years earlier as it rejected Steve Jobs offer to partner with Apple’s new phone. Verizon who was known for its stickler for bandwidth reliability clearly declined Apple’s offer as it did not want to relinquish control of its network to an un known and unseen smartphone which Apple wanted to design. Like Mike Lazaridis verizon’s core executives .According to “ Sean silcoff “author of the book “ “Loosing the signal” which chronicles the fall of blackberry had correctly predicted that the iPhone traffic would create a gridlock on AT and T’s network What it did not anticipate that consumers did not care. A multi billion dollar market in carrier revenue was about to open up and AT and T had the lock on the hottest device . RIM’s new blackberry Bold was simply no match for the jesus smartphone.

how RIM's ceo mike lazaridis underestimation of the iPhone led to its fall

 

Among one of the many reasons of Blackberry’s fall was its inability to understand and underestimate the power and the brilliance of iPhone. Mike Lazaridis did not give enough thought to Apples new iPhone for some months. Blackberry did not feel that it would actually be a threat to RIM's core business.According to RIM,  iPhone’s basic problem where RIM had a huge advantage was the  iPhone's rapid battery drain and what the smartphone manufacturer  felt was iPhone's lousy digital keyboard . RIM believed that iPhone would gain traction among the non enterprise customers who cared more about youtube and other online social escapades as opposed to RIM’s core enterprise customers who cared more about security and efficiency .

 Another fact that made RIM complacent was its fast growing business in a world that was hungry for blackberry. In the year  when steve jobs launched iPhone in 2007,blackberry was adding more than a million blackberry’s per quarter . By that time RIM’s new consumer phone “ Blackberry Pearl was a spectacular hit, with 59% increase in sales to 6.4 million handsets in fiscal 2007

What RIM had underestimated was the sheer tenacity and technical prowess about the iPhone. In the book "Loosing the signal " which  chronicles the demise of blackberry, Jacquie McNish writes that RIM’s CEO Lazaridis  was stunned what he saw when he began to break and disassemble the iPhone on his table. What he founded astounded him .The iPhone was no ordinary smartphone .The iPhone  was actually an apple mobile OS which used 7000 megabytes of memory , which was more than 22 times the power of Blackberry .The iphone had a full browser that travelled everywhere on the web, With carriers AT & T backing , Apple was changing the direction of smartphone industry, as RIM was caught napping..