There’s no denying that BlackBerry has undergone a trial by fire recently. As a darling of the international smartphone market, the brand enjoyed the kind of adulation and fierce evangelism one might associate with the likes of Coca-Cola or McDonald’s. Known for its e-mail-friendly handsets and light-on-the-pocket BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS) data packages, by end 2010, this once minor Canadian mobile startup had transformed itself into a global giant.

In mid-2011, things began to take a turn for the worse. The desirability of BlackBerry’s secure, corporate-friendly BIS and BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) network began to lose traction to more striking handsets introduced by the likes of Apple and Samsung, while frequent regional data outages only served to aggravate consumers.