What if you bought BlackBerry in 2003?
World · Canada. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.
Could you have picked it? Play1.1× · S&P 500 same money: $7,727
$1,000 in BlackBerry at the start of 2003 would be worth about $1,143 today. A plain S&P 500 index fund over the same years would have made more — the boring option won.
The story
Research In Motion, the Canadian company behind the BlackBerry, defined the mobile email era. Its devices with physical keyboards became indispensable for executives and politicians, earning the nickname CrackBerry. In 2006 it paid more than $600 million to settle a patent dispute that had threatened to shut down its service in the US. The shares rose more than thirtyfold from 2003 to 2008.
The iPhone, launched in 2007, initially seemed to pose little threat, as RIM argued that business users wanted keyboards and security. Consumers disagreed, and so did their employers. The PlayBook tablet flopped in 2011, the co-CEOs stepped down in 2012, and the long-delayed BlackBerry 10 system arrived in 2013 to little interest. The company renamed itself BlackBerry, and under John Chen it abandoned making phones in 2016 to become a software company focused on cybersecurity and the QNX operating system for cars. It briefly surged as a meme stock in 2021. From the 2008 peak, investors lost about 97 percent.
The lesson: Companies that dismiss a new competitor because it does not serve their existing customers often discover that customers' preferences change faster than they expected.
$1,000 invested at the start of each year
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2003 | $3.50 | $1,143 | $7,727 | 1.1× |
| 2005 | $27.00 | $148 | $5,763 | 0.1× |
| 2007 | $43.00 | $93.02 | $4,789 | 0.1× |
| 2008 | $115 | $34.78 | $4,626 | 0.0× |
| 2010 | $68.00 | $58.82 | $6,071 | 0.1× |
| 2012 | $15.00 | $267 | $5,312 | 0.3× |
| 2015 | $11.00 | $364 | $3,301 | 0.4× |
| 2018 | $12.00 | $333 | $2,519 | 0.3× |
| 2020 | $6.50 | $615 | $2,092 | 0.6× |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
Best entry point in our set: 2003, turning $1,000 into $1,143. The S&P 500 from that same year: $7,727.
Now try it without hindsight. The wheel decides the year and the asset class, you pick the position, ten seconds a pick, and we simulate to today. BlackBerry is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
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