WhereIsAtlas · Technology

What Happened to BlackBerry?

The physical-keyboard phone that ruled the corporate world — until touchscreens and app stores made it obsolete.

BlackBerry built the smartphone that executives could not live without, then collapsed when Apple's iPhone and Google's Android redefined the market around touchscreens and apps. The hardware is gone, but BlackBerry survives as a software and cybersecurity company.

The keyboard that conquered the boardroom

Research In Motion was founded in Waterloo, Ontario in 1984, but it was the BlackBerry that made it famous. The device — a compact phone with a small physical keyboard — let businesspeople send and receive secure email anywhere. At its peak, the BlackBerry was the symbol of executive productivity, and its push-email technology made it feel like a lifetime ahead of rivals.

For years, the BlackBerry was the corporate standard. Politicians, executives and professionals carried one, and its famously strong security made it the phone of choice where privacy mattered.

The world changed

Everything changed with the launch of Apple's iPhone in 2007, followed quickly by Google's Android. Touchscreens, sleek app stores and consumer-friendly software redefined what people wanted from a phone. The BlackBerry's physical keyboard — once its greatest strength — began to feel like a relic, and its narrow app ecosystem fell far behind the iPhone and Android stores.

BlackBerry fought back with several attempts at a touchscreen rebrand, but it had lost the race. Through the 2010s, market share collapsed at a startling pace.

The end of the hardware

By 2016 BlackBerry had essentially stopped making phones. It licensed the BlackBerry name to other manufacturers, but the brand's magic had faded. In 2020 the last major licensee, TCL, ended its BlackBerry-branded phones — the final nail in the coffin for the once-dominant smartphone.

Where BlackBerry is now

BlackBerry renamed itself BlackBerry Limited and pivoted to software and cybersecurity — a very different business from the phone maker that once ruled the mobile world. It continues to operate today in enterprise security and IoT software, but the iconic BlackBerry smartphone that built the brand is gone.

The story is a classic of tech history: a company that built a category, owned it, and then was undone by a shift in the platform itself. In the end, the phone that made BlackBerry famous was the same thing that made it obsolete.

Sources