Blackberry

Blackberry was founded in 1984 by Mike Lazaridis
at age 23 and Douglas Fregin, in Waterloo,
Ontario Canada, it was at that time known as Research
in Motion Limited.   Its is a line of SmartPhones, tablets
and services originally manufactured and supplied by the Canadian company.  It only officially became known as
BlackBerry in 2013, but before this time was known as RIM (Research In Motion Ltd) for
many years.

Above are some of Blackberrys latest SmartPhones since they began, but they have come from a long way.

Mr. Lazaridis, a great engineer co-founded RIM in a tiny Waterloo office above a bagel shop in 1984.

It must be said for the record, BlackBerrys are cult Mobile
devices, inspiring a kind of slavish devotion perhaps matched only by Apple
products, the same can be said for Motorola.

RIM worked hand in hand with government and
in 1988 began developing products for Mobitex 
wireless packet-switched data communications networks, that was used by
military and police forces, ambulance and firefighters services.

Before releasing its electronics RIM worked 
on a two-way paging and wireless email network system with Ericsson iconised by
the ability of all Blackberry handset users to communicate between themselves
(for free) known as pinging, this is one of the aspects that made them unique to
Mobile Phones users.

The real fact is that BlackBerry achieved market share in the mobile
industry by focusing on email. BlackBerry started to offer email service on
non-BlackBerry devices, such as the Palm Treo,
through the proprietary BlackBerry Connect software.

Jim Balsillie joins RIM in 1992 and then he
would become co-CEO along with Mike Lazaridis.

The first produced device was the Inter@ctive Pager
900, also known as the RIM 900, its first keyboard-based device released on
September 18, 1996.  It was a clamshell–
kind of device that allowed two-way paging.  The next two-way pager
released was a dramatically slimmed down two-way pager, the Inter@ctive Pager
950, on August 26, 1998.

And then behold the very first device with
the BlackBerry name on it was the BlackBerry 850, an email pager that was
released January 19, 1999 in Munich, Germany.  In the same year the stock
symbol RIMM is added to Nasdaq and then RIM announces it has received FCC
approval in the U.S. to begin selling its first BlackBerry device, the 850,
with mobile email.

From here on in, the name Inter@ctive Pager was
obsolete and was no longer used as a brand name for the the device. The top
marketing company Lexicon Branding
came up with the name BlackBerry and rightfully so, as they saw that the
keyboard’s buttons looked like that of the drupelets
that compose the blackberry fruit. 

With the release the BlackBerry 5810 in 2002
RIM adds voice calling capabilities for the first time and then in 2003
RIM is added to the Nasdaq 100, and releases its first BlackBerry with a colour
screen.

Blackberry used to be one of the biggest movers and
shakers in the Mobile Phone industry which included secure communications, but
since then BlackBerry has lost this reputation in the world market because of
the spread and success of the Android and iOS
SmartPhone operating system platforms.

As of March 2016 Blackberry had 23 million
subscribers world wide, this figure is a great fall from 85 million BlackBerry
subscribers it had at its peak in September
2013.

BlackBerry handsets traditionally used its own
original dedicated operating system developed by BlackBerry Limited which they
called BlackBerry OS.

As of March 2016 Blackberry had 23 million
subscribers world wide, this figure is a great fall from 85 million BlackBerry
subscribers it had at its peak in September
2013.

BlackBerry handsets traditionally used its own
original dedicated operating system developed by BlackBerry Limited which they
called BlackBerry OS.

The very first rollout of the Blackberry 10 OS on a
device was with the Blackberry Z10  on January 30, 2013, which was
followed with the release of the BlackBerry Q10 SmartPhone. Both models consist
of touch screens: the Z10 features an all-touch design and the Q10 combines a
QWERTY keyboard with touchscreen features.

During the same period, BlackBerry
also introduced the new BlackBerry Passport handset — consisting of a 4.5 inches square
screen with “Full HD-class” (1,440 x 1,440) resolution and primarily
targeted at the business and professional SmartPhone users — took the
opportunity to strategically promote its Messenger app and released minor
updates for the BB10 mobile operating system.

During the second financial quarter of 2013, BlackBerry sold 6.8 million
handsets.  However Blackberry was surpassed by the sales of competitor
Nokia’s Lumia model for the first time.

On December 17, 2014, the BlackBerry Classic was introduced; a more sophisticated exotic SmartPhone exhibiting
all-touch and keyboard-equipped functionality, models such as the BlackBerry Leap, meant to be more in line with the former Bold series,
incorporating navigation buttons similar to the previous BlackBerry OS device.

Blackberry announced it would cease designing its
own phones on September 28, 2016,  in favour of licensing to partners,
this was after in 2015, BlackBerry re-modelled and channelled its business in
another direction and began to release Android-based SmartPhones.

Beginning
with the BlackBerry Priv slider phablet
that uses the Android operating system with added security and
productivity-oriented features inspired (for businesses users) by the
BlackBerry operating systems. And
then the BlackBerry DTEK50 was released a
mid-range Android model with an on-screen keyboard, the BlackBerry DTEK50 was powered by the current version of Android,
6.0, Marshmallow, featuring a 5.2-inch full HD display.

In terms of navigation Blackberry actually
ergonomically and efficiently optimised the best way possible to use only the
thumbs to type on the keyboard.  The original BlackBerry device was rudimentary
and practical in terms of navigation coupled with monochrome
displays.

However it was the newer models that had colour displays installed,
coupled with optimisation for “thumbing“,
the use of only the thumbs to type on a keyboard
with the aid of SureType which the
Storm 1 and Storm 2 had, a full qwerty keyboard compacted to only 20 keys,
built to make texting really quick. Invented by Research In Motion (RIM)

SureType was first introduced with the BlackBerry
7100, launched in 2004, the technology allowed Mobile users to press a single key
and the phone figures out what they want to type , an A or S, to appear on the
screen relative to the intended word.

Initially the use of a scroll wheel mounted on the
right side of earlier device models acted as the navigation system access tool,
this was before the 8700. 

With the release of the Pearl series came
the trackball which allowed four-way scrolling,  replaced the trackwheel,
and then the trackball was replaced by the optical trackpad through the release
of the  series.

BlackBerry’s benefits and its social
ills had all the talk about how people were so addicted to Blackberry hence the
term “CrackBerrys” came into effect.

It was really about BlackBerry use by professionals
and how tough it was on some families. studies showed that even though spouses
felt the only appropriate use of BlackBerrys was during business hours, a large
number felt their partners inappropriately used their BlackBerrys several times
a day.

RIM also didn’t take the Web experience as seriously as it should have,
by bringing out a BlackBerry browser and a good App Store.