BlackBerry, made by Canada's Research In Motion, pioneered secure push email from 1999 and led the US smartphone market in 2009. Revenue peaked at US$19.9 bill…
Two engineering students founded RIM in Waterloo, Canada. Jim Balsillie joined in 1992 as co-CEO.
Company email pushed to a thumb-keyboard pager the moment it arrived. No phone, no browser.
BlackBerry Enterprise Server let IT secure every device. The 2006 Pearl took it to consumers.
No. RIM kept growing. But its touchscreen Storm disappointed, and the App Store changed what phones were for.
BlackBerry led US smartphone subscribers in 2009 and posted record revenue in fiscal 2011. Obama kept his BlackBerry.
No. RIM offered interception for consumer services and the deadline was extended.
Android overtook RIM among US smartphone users. The PlayBook tablet then cost a US$485M charge.
BB10 came five years late. Unsold Z10s forced a huge charge and 4,500 job cuts. A US$4.7B sale collapsed.
Investors led by Fairfax put in US$1 billion and John Chen began turning BlackBerry into a software firm.
After the Android Priv, BlackBerry stopped designing phones in 2016 and licensed its name to TCL until 2020.
Consumer BBM shut in May 2019. On 4 January 2022 BB7 and BB10 services were switched off.
32,000 patents sold, John Giamatteo became CEO, and Cylance was sold in 2025.
A profitable software company: QNX revenue up 27% in Q2 fiscal 2027, plus secure communications for governments.
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