Anyone who grew up in the early 2000s will likely remember ‘BBM’.
The messaging platform was an absolute craze, with constant pings during school hours driving teachers up the wall.
It felt like everyone who was anyone had a BlackBerry device.
Despite its dominance back in the day, BlackBerry’s influence waned drastically with the rise of competitors like Apple and Android-powered devices.
The original smartphone
BlackBerry changed the game when it came to mobile technology.
The idea of sending work emails from your phone, now an everyday thing, was practically invented by BlackBerry.
He added: “People were telling me they could send emails, and I remember thinking ‘No, you must be mistaken, you’re sending SMS text messages’. But a friend sent me an email from their phone, and I had to go home and pick it up on my PC. It was incredible.”
For the first time, you didn’t need to be tied to your desk to stay connected. It’s hard to imagine today, but back then, this was groundbreaking for professionals and executives.
However, this number would eventually plummet as competitors surged ahead.
How BlackBerry lost its grip
By March 2016, the number of BlackBerry users had fallen drastically to just 23 million globally.
The rise of brands like iPhone, Samsung, and Google phones left BlackBerry struggling to keep up.
Margolis suggested that BlackBerry’s rapid rise to success made the company a bit too confident in its position.
“There was a time when they thought that typing on to a flat sheet of glass wouldn’t work, but within a year the clicky-clicky BlackBerry method of typing seemed completely antiquated,” he explained, shedding light on their misjudgment.
The company officially shut down its servers in January 2022, leaving its last remaining users disconnected.
The incredible rise and fall of BlackBerry has even been immortalized in film.
The 2023 movie BlackBerry dives deep into the company’s meteoric growth and eventual collapse.
