The arrival of the iPhone and Google’s Android operating system sent BlackBerry into something of a tailspin. In January 2007, just when BlackBerry was hitting its stride with the Pearl line, Apple introduced the world to the iPhone.
In the eight years since, BlackBerry has struggled to keep up with major device manufacturers and has faced criticism for missing the boat on touchscreen smartphones, apps, and tablets. Today, BlackBerry celebrates the 16th birthday of the BlackBerry handheld, and it’s nothing if not a demonstration of how far BlackBerry and mobile technology have come in a decade and a half.
In January of 1999, BlackBerry introduced the world to the Pager 850. It had a QWERTY keyboard, 2MB of storage and was based on Intel’s 32-bit 386 (the same technology that powered my first computer as a little girl). In May of that year, the company launched the RIM Inter@active Pager 850 with eLink wireless email service from American Mobile. The device was priced at priced at $360 and aimed at professionals. It allowed for the sending and receiving of email and messages as well as syncing of contacts, schedules, and tasks with a computer. It also supported POP3 email. The 850 sold for $359.95 through American Mobile along with an unlimited monthly airtime agreement for $59.95. It couldn’t make phone calls.
“Email has become the predominant method of business communication, even exceeding the telephone. The implications of this fact are far-reaching for individuals and organizations alike,” former co-CEO Mike Lazaridis said at the time. “The RIM Inter@ctive Pager 850 is a dedicated and optimized messaging device designed to bridge mobile professionals with their email and maintain productivity wherever they go.”
BlackBerry followed up with numerous other pagers before debuting the Quark, its first device with an integrated phone, in 2003, the Charm in 2004, then the Electron, and eventually the Pearl and Curve lines in the latter half of the 2000s.
[source]BlackBerry 1, BlackBerry 2[/source]
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