As recently as 2011, BlackBerry smartphones were still the de facto standard device for enterprise communication.
IT departments valued the management and security capabilities offered by the BES platform, while business people enjoyed the ability to send and receive emails, especially on the physical keyboard.
BlackBerry phones were even popular among younger users, partly due to the ability to communicate via BlackBerry Messenger (BBM).
The Canadian company’s response was slow and the arrival of BlackBerry 10 came too late to reverse the trend.
Under John Chen’s leadership, the ‘new’ BlackBerry is a much smaller company, focused on services and software – as demonstrated by its recent agreement to purchase Good Technology and the relaunch of BBM as a multi-platform application.
It still makes phones too though. The Passport and the Classic played up to BlackBerry’s design roots, while the Priv was its first ever Android-powered handset.
But how do you see BlackBerry. Is it a hardware company, a software company, is it both? Or is it a relic? We want to know.
Tell us in the poll below.
Think you’re a BlackBerry expert? Take our quiz!
Thoma Bravo agrees to acquire Darktrace for $5.32 billion in cash, delivering some welcome news…
Customer adoption of AI services embedded in cloud services continues to deliver results for Microsoft,…
TikTok's 'secret source' algorithm is so core to ByteDance, it would rather shut down US…
After relocating from California to Texas in 2020, Oracle's Larry Ellison now reveals plan to…
Share price hit after Meta admits heavy AI spending plans, after posting strong first quarter…
For third time Google delays phase-out of third-party Chrome cookies after pushback from industry and…