WhereIsAtlas · Technology
BlackBerry
The smartphone giant that ruled the corporate world, then fell to touchscreens and apps
Transformed — Once the dominant smartphone maker with the iconic physical-keyboard BlackBerry, it collapsed as touchscreen rivals Apple and Android took over. BlackBerry now lives on as a software and cybersecurity company.
BlackBerry began in 1984 as Research In Motion (RIM), founded in Waterloo, Ontario, by Mike Lazaridis and Douglas Fregin. Its breakthrough was a email-capable pager and, later, the BlackBerry smartphone — a device with a small physical keyboard that let businesspeople send secure email on the go. At its peak, BlackBerry was the must-have phone for executives, politicians and professionals, and its push-email technology and reputation for security made it a corporate standard.
The company dominated the smartphone market through the 2000s, but the launch of Apple's iPhone in 2007, and then Google's Android, changed everything. Touchscreens and app stores redefined what a smartphone was, and BlackBerry's physical keyboard and narrow app ecosystem could not keep up. Through the 2010s BlackBerry lost market share at a staggering rate, and by 2016 it had essentially stopped making phones.
BlackBerry's hardware was eventually licensed to other manufacturers, and in 2020 the last licensee, TCL, ended its BlackBerry-branded phones. The company itself pivoted to software and cybersecurity — renaming itself BlackBerry Limited — and continues to operate today as a cybersecurity and IoT software firm, but the iconic smartphone that defined it is gone.
Quick facts
- Founded
- 1984 (as Research In Motion)
- Based
- Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
- Signature
- Physical-keyboard smartphone + secure push email
- Peak
- Years as the must-have corporate phone
- The fall
- iPhone (2007) + Android changed the market
- Hardware ended
- 2016; last licensee TCL exits 2020
- Today
- BlackBerry Limited — software & cybersecurity
Lineage — where the name went
BlackBerry is a company that took its own product's name, then gave the product away. The brand outlived the hardware business by a decade — and the company that remains is a cybersecurity firm.
- 1996 — Research In Motion created Inter@ctive Pager
- 1999 — Research In Motion created BlackBerry (the device that defined the company)
- 2010 — Research In Motion acquired QNX (the car OS that later anchored BlackBerry's IoT business)
- 2013 — Research In Motion rebranded as BlackBerry Limited (the company adopted its product's name)
- 2016 — BlackBerry Limited licensed the brand to TCL (hardware outsourced rather than made)
- 2018 — BlackBerry Limited acquired Cylance (the pivot into cybersecurity)
- 2020 — BlackBerry Limited licensed the brand to OnwardMobility (the last licensee; it never shipped a phone)
- 2022 — BlackBerry Limited sold Legacy patents (legacy patents sold to Catapult IP Innovations)
Entities in this tree: Research In Motion (company, 1984); Inter@ctive Pager (product, 1996); BlackBerry (product, 1999); QNX (product, 2010); BlackBerry Limited (company, 2013); Cylance (company, 2018); TCL (company, 2016); OnwardMobility (company, 2020); Legacy patents (product, 2022)
Sources
- BlackBerry - Wikipedia — Wikipedia (2026-09-04)
- BlackBerry breaks up with phone-maker TCL — BBC News (2026-09-04)
- TCL to stop selling BlackBerry phones — Business Insider (2026-09-04)