What Happened to BlackBerry Phones Will Surprise You

May 2024 · 4 minute read

BlackBerry phones had been all of the rage, but what happened to BlackBerry wound up turning into a 2023 movie. Here's how they disappeared.

Brittany Frederick - Author

The Gist:

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BlackBerry cell phones had been once incredibly in style—being used by numerous consumers, as well as a number of well-known (and notorious) folks before Apple's iPhone cornered the market. But the company went from being a family title to reputedly plummeting off the face of the Earth. What happened to BlackBerry, and can you still get a BlackBerry cell phone as of late?

The historical past of BlackBerry dates back nearly 30 years and throughout multiple countries. It comes to global leaders and arranged crime, and it ended on the giant screen. Here's the whole thing you want to understand about the rise and fall of BlackBerry—including a few things you most probably never knew.

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What happened to BlackBerry mobile phones?

BlackBerry mobile phones and pagers have been the brainchild of the Canadian company Research in Motion (RIM), which firstly introduced the Inter@ctive Pager 900 on Sept. 18, 1996. The BlackBerry 850 e-mail pager got here alongside just over two years later, on Jan. 19, 1999, in Munich, Germany—and then the corporate used to be off to the races.

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By 2009, the New York Times was once writing a story about how long run President Barack Obama used a BlackBerry all over his marketing campaign, and Obama stored the phone till 2016. Hillary Clinton used to be also a well known BlackBerry user, putting the emblem front and center all over Clinton's e-mail controversy.

Kim Kardashian enthusiastically counseled the logo in 2014, and Alicia Keys and Jessie J have been amongst its celebrity spokespeople, with Keys being named BlackBerry's "Global Creative Director" in 2013.

Most infamously, in 2009, CNN Expansion reported that Mexico's Gulf Cartel used BlackBerry phones to keep up a correspondence with Italy's organized crime staff, the 'Ndrangheta.

But all of this consideration wasn't sufficient to maintain BlackBerry in the face of higher pageant. While in that very same 12 months CNN known as the BlackBerry Curve the best-selling smartphone in America, by way of 2015 the brand had not up to one p.c of the smartphone marketplace.

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In the summer time of 2020, RIM attempted a comeback via partnering with OnwardMobility to broaden a brand new BlackBerry phone described as "an Android-based, next-gen WiFi device." However, in February 2022, CNET reported that the BlackBerry 5G plan was formally dead—and OnwardMobility used to be shutting down with it.

That supposed the final reputable BlackBerry phone launched used to be the BlackBerry Evolve X in 2018.

Source: IFC Films / YouTube

The trailer for 2023's 'Blackberry' movie, starring Glenn Howerton and Jay Baruchel.

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Do BlackBerry phones nonetheless exist in 2023?

BlackBerry has not launched a brand new phone since 2018, with the corporate discontinuing its device services for any non-Android fashions in 2022.

However, there used to be renewed hobby in pop culture after Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff's book Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry was once launched in 2015. That guide was once adapted into the movie merely titled BlackBerry in 2023.

BlackBerry stars Jay Baruchel (Tropic Thunder) and Glenn Howerton (It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia) as RIM founders Mike Lazaridis and Douglas Fregin, and follows the corporate from its 1996 beginnings to its collapse. TV community AMC has repackaged the film as a three-part miniseries to air beginning Nov. 13, 2023.

While audiences can not get a BlackBerry phone, they are able to nonetheless revisit the BlackBerry enjoy during the film. For a handful of years, BlackBerry cell phones had been insanely fashionable and apparently far and wide—however like many technological trends, they ended up being surpassed by the next giant thing.

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