<p>I first met Mike Lazaridis, the retired co-CEO and founder of Research in Motion (RIM), in 1991 when I was a rogue marketing manager at Ericsson desperately searching for wireless email software to marry with the world's first portable wireless data modem, which we were preparing to launch that next year. Cell phones were analog back then, with no capacity for text messaging much less a data channel. Ericsson was intent on chasing taxi dispatchers and utility service vehicles, but those of us who came of age with the PC industry knew that the liberating ingredient missing from laptop and palmtop computers was mobile data capability.</p><p>And so, we improvised. We lashed together our walkie talkie-sized 8 Kbps wireless modem with an HP-95 palmtop computer, and set out to convince road warriors of the roaring 90s to climb aboard our vision of the future. Little did we know that the conductor of that train would be a soft spoken Canadian engineer whose uncanny ability to stuff two pounds of radio gear in a 10-ounce bag would launch a revolution that is still reverberating around the planet.</p><p>The world's first commercially available wireless email productthe great, great granddaddy of today's BlackBerry Q10was a pretty kuldgy affair, pictured above in all its glory. And it almost didn't happen. If it weren't for a $50,000 loan that I finagled out of my boss, the launch of the "Viking Express" wireless email package at Demo '92 would have been a bust. That loan allowed Mike and his merry band to cobble together the palmtop client software necessary to connect with the RadioMail server, another marvel of its day, running in the bedroom closet of an eccentric Silicon Valley entrepreneur named Geoff Goodfellow.</p><p>Looking back on those days as I fondle the BlackBerry Q10 I bought yesterday, enjoying a BBM video chat with the now silver-haired Lazaridis, two decades of the most amazing run in telecommunications history flashes before our eyes. Through it all, the constancy of Mike's vision never stopped amazing me, along with the ability of the company he built to deliver an outstanding competitive product in a market now dominated by an all-devouring Korean giant and an iconic American iCult.</p><p><a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/billfrezza/2013/06/11/the-blackberry-q10-delivers-as-mike-lazaridis-reflects/">Keep reading...</a></p><p>Read also:</p><p><a href="http://go-jamaica.com/pressrelease/item.php?id=2181">Digicel launches the new Blackberry Q10 Smartphone</a> (Go Jamaica (press release))</p><p><a href="http://www.telecompaper.com/news/mobitel-adds-blackberry-q10-to-offer--948777">Mobitel adds BlackBerry Q10 to offer</a> (Telecompaper (subscription))</p><p>Explore: <a href="http://news.google.com/news/more?ncl=d1vgVrQZHoIFlEMmGXo61m1lcW8fM&ned=us">3 additional articles.</a></p>