The BlackBerry is a line of wireless handheld devices and services designed and marketed by BlackBerry Limited, formerly known as Research In Motion Limited (RIM). The first BlackBerry device, an email pager, was released in 1999. The most recent BlackBerry devices are the Z30, Z10, Q10 and Q5. The Z10 and Q10 were announced on January 30, 2013, and the Q5 was announced on May 14, 2013. The user interface varies by model; most had featured a physical QWERTY keyboard, while newer generations have relied on a multi-touch screen and virtual keyboard.
BlackBerry devices can shoot video, take photos and play music; these devices also provide essentials such as web-browsing, email messaging, instant messaging, and the proprietary BlackBerry Messenger.
BlackBerry accounts for 3% of mobile device sales worldwide in 2011, making its manufacturer the sixth most popular device maker (25% of mobile device sales are smartphones). The consumer BlackBerry Internet Service is available in 91 countries worldwide on over 500 mobile service operators using various mobile technologies. As of September 2012, there were eighty million subscribers worldwide to BlackBerry. In 2011 the Caribbean and Latin America had the highest penetrations of BlackBerry smartphones worldwide, with up to about 45 percent in the region having a BlackBerry device. BlackBerry was widely referred to as "CrackBerry" in the United States, which alluded to its excessive use by its owners and is a reference to the addictiveness of crack cocaine. Use of the term CrackBerry became so widespread that in November 2006 Webster's New World College Dictionary named "crackberry" the "New Word of the Year."
History
Mike Lazaridis - Founder and former co-CEO of BlackBerry
The first BlackBerry device, the 850, was introduced in 1999 as a two-way pager in Munich, Germany.The name BlackBerry was coined by the marketing company Lexicon Branding. The name was chosen due to the resemblance of the keyboard's buttons to that of the drupelets that compose the blackberry fruit.
The original BlackBerry devices, the RIM 850 and 857, used the DataTAC network. In 2003, the more commonly known convergent smartphone BlackBerry was released, which supports push email, mobile telephone, text messaging, Internet faxing, Web browsing and other wireless information services.
BlackBerry gained marketshare in the mobile industry by concentrating on email. BlackBerry began to offer email service on non-BlackBerry devices, such as the Palm Treo, through the proprietary BlackBerry Connect software.
The original BlackBerry device had a monochrome display while newer models installed color displays. All newer models have been optimized for "thumbing", the use of only the thumbs to type on a keyboard. The Storm 1 and Storm 2 include a SureType keypad for typing. Originally, system navigation was achieved with the use of a scroll wheel mounted on the right side of device models prior to the 8700. The trackwheel was replaced by the trackball with the introduction of the Pearl series which allowed 4-way scrolling. The trackball was replaced by the optical trackpad with the introduction of the Curve 8500 series. Models made to use iDEN networks such as Nextel and Mike also incorporate a push-to-talk(PTT) feature, similar to a two-way radio.
On January 30, 2013, BlackBerry announced the release of the Z10 and Q10 smartphones. 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 second financial quarter of 2013, BlackBerry sold 6.8 million handsets but was lapsed by the sales of competitor Nokia's Lumia model for the first time.
On August 12, 2013, BlackBerry announced the intention to sell the company due to their increasingly unfavourable financial position and competition in the mobile industry. Largely due to lower than expected sales on the Z10, BlackBerry announced on September 20, 2013 that 4,500 full- and part-time positions (an estimated 40% of its operating staff) have been terminated and its product line has been reduced from six to four models. On September 23, 2013, Fairfax Financial, which owns a 10% equity stake in BlackBerry, made an offer to acquire BlackBerry for $4.7 billion (at $9.00 per share). Following the announcement, BlackBerry announced an acceptance of the offer provisionally but it will continue to seek other offers until November 4, 2013.
On November 4, 2013, BlackBerry replaced Thorsten Heins with new interim CEO John S. Chen, the former CEO of Sybase. On November 8, the BlackBerry board rejected proposals from several technology companies for various BlackBerry assets on grounds that a break-up did not serve the interest of all stakeholders, which include employees, customers and suppliers in addition to shareholders, said the sources, who did not want to be identified as the discussions were confidential. On November 13, 2013, Chen released an open message: "We are committed to reclaiming our success."
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