Blackberry goes the way of the dodo

It seems I’m not the only one to have fallen out of love with the Blackberry. The company have announced that, not only are the phones not in production anymore, from January 4 2022, they were switching the Blackberry service off for its older devices, i.e. any that don’t use Android software. It’s surely only a matter of time before the Blackberry disappears altogether.

Blackberry was actually only launched in 1999 but it quickly became a favourite with the public. At its peak, it owned a 20% share of the entire global mobile market. Today, however, the public are used to apps and touch screen keyboards that the iPhone and other smartphone companies provide. The physical QWERTY keyboard on Blackberry models, which was what set it apart from its rivals in its heyday, is no longer revolutionary. Time and technology do not stop advancing.

The company behind the Blackberry phones have now moved into security software, which will be their main priority going forwards. In this article, I discussed how technological breakthroughs made more of an impact in the twenty years before the turn of the century than the two decades after. Businesses sometimes pivot in another direction; just because they become known for one thing doesn’t mean that’s their final legacy. For example, Nintendo initially made playing cards, Samsung originally exported noodles and dried fish, and Nokia spent its first few years making tyres and rubber boots. That Blackberry has discontinued its once-popular mobile phone in favour of a different path is not unique.