95-454: BlackBerry was a maker of smartphones and other related mobile services and devices. The line was originally developed and maintained by the Canadian company BlackBerry Limited (formerly known as Research In Motion, or RIM) from 1999 to 2016, after which it was licensed to various companies. Specializing in secure communications and mobile productivity, BlackBerry was once well known for
190-411: A gyroscope , an accelerometer , and more ), and support diverse wireless communication protocols (such as LTE , 5G NR , Wi-Fi , Bluetooth , and satellite navigation ). In the mid-2020s, smartphone manufacturers have begun to integrate satellite messaging connectivity and satellite emergency services into devices for use in remote regions where there is no reliable cellular network . Following
285-405: 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
380-692: A phone , is a mobile device that combines the functionality of a traditional mobile phone with advanced computing capabilities. It typically has a touchscreen interface, allowing users to access a wide range of applications and services, such as web browsing , email , and social media , as well as multimedia playback and streaming . Smartphones have built-in cameras , GPS navigation , and support for various communication methods, including voice calls, text messaging , and internet-based messaging apps. Smartphones are distinguished from older-design feature phones by their more advanced hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems , access to
475-692: A " keyboard bar " form factor, like the BlackBerry line, Windows Mobile smartphones, Palm Treos , and some of the Nokia Eseries . A few hid their full physical QWERTY keyboard in a sliding form factor , like the Danger Hiptop line. Some even had only a numeric keypad using T9 text input , like the Nokia Nseries and other models in the Nokia Eseries . Resistive touchscreens with stylus -based interfaces could still be found on
570-515: A "devices and services" company. Despite the growth of Windows Phone and the Lumia range (which accounted for nearly 90% of all Windows Phone devices sold), the platform never had significant market share in the key U.S. market, and Microsoft was unable to maintain Windows Phone's momentum in the years that followed, resulting in dwindling interest from users and app developers. After Balmer
665-466: 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 would 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,
760-431: A 3.5" capacitive touchscreen with twice the common resolution of most smartphone screens at the time , and introduced multi-touch to phones, which allowed gestures such as "pinching" to zoom in or out on photos, maps, and web pages. The iPhone was notable as being the first device of its kind targeted at the mass market to abandon the use of a stylus, keyboard, or keypad typical of contemporary smartphones, instead using
855-582: A 50 percent rise in the company's stock, an increase that was greater than peer companies such as Apple and Google; however, an analysis of BlackBerry's financial results showed that neither revenue or profit margin were improved, but, instead, costs were markedly reduced. During the same period, BlackBerry also introduced the new Passport handset—consisting of a 4.5-inch (11 cm) square screen with "Full HD-class" (1,440 x 1,440) resolution and marketed to professional fields such as healthcare and architecture—promoted its Messenger app and released minor updates for
950-951: A BlackBerry Store opened in Farmington Hills, Michigan . The store offers BlackBerry device models from AT&T , T-Mobile , Verizon , and Sprint , the major U.S. carriers which offer smartphones . There were three prior attempts at opening BlackBerry stores in Toronto ( Canada ) and London ( United Kingdom ), but they eventually folded. There are also BlackBerry Stores operated by Wireless Giant at airports in Atlanta , Boston , Charlotte , Minneapolis–St. Paul , Philadelphia , Houston , and Newark , but several have been slated for closing. On September 23, 2015, BlackBerry opened its first pop-up store in Frankfurt , Germany . Smartphone A smartphone , often simply called
1045-480: A QWERTY-based keyboard to create a non-standard way to input text on a cell phone. In addition, SureType contains a list of 35,000 English words, so when a user types the beginning of a word, all the possible words which start with those letters show up on the screen. Additional words can also be added to the word list. SureType was developed by BlackBerry vendor Research in Motion . This computer science article
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#17327915810621140-478: A contract for more than 10'000 BlackBerry Z10 for Peugeot SA . On February 26, 2014, during Mobile World Congress , Airbus signed a contract with BlackBerry Europe Managing Director, Herve Liboureau, for the BlackBerry 10 entire Mobility Management suite. In early July 2014, the TechCrunch online publication published an article titled "BlackBerry Is One Of The Hottest Stocks Of 2014, Seriously", following
1235-436: A court order this afternoon. The agreement eliminates the need for any further court proceedings or decisions relating to damages or injunctive relief." The settlement amount is believed low by some analysts, because of the absence of any future royalties on the technology in question. On May 26, 2017, BlackBerry announced that it had reached an agreement with Qualcomm Incorporated resolving all amounts payable in connection with
1330-439: A dependence on third-party sources providing applications for multiple platforms. The advantages of a design with software powerful enough to support advanced applications and a large capacitive touchscreen affected the development of another smartphone OS platform, Android , with a more BlackBerry-like prototype device scrapped in favor of a touchscreen device with a slide-out physical keyboard, as Google's engineers thought at
1425-748: A dual camera setup and incorporates features such as portrait mode and optical zoom. In August 2018, after the launch of the BlackBerry Key2, Optiemus Infracom announced the launch of the BlackBerry Evolve and Evolve X smartphones for the Indian market sold exclusively on Amazon India. The smartphones have been conceptualized, designed and manufactured in India. As of 2019, BB Merah Putih's website has been repurposed, with BlackBerry Limited stating that only technical support will be offered for
1520-479: A dual five-megapixel rear camera setup for spatial imaging, among the earliest mobile phones with more than one rear camera . The 2012 Samsung Galaxy S3 introduced the ability to capture photos using voice commands . SureType SureType is a QWERTY -based character input method for cell phones which is used on the BlackBerry Pearl . SureType combines a traditional telephone keypad with
1615-457: A few smartphones, like the Palm Treos , which had dropped their handwriting input after a few early models that were available in versions with Graffiti instead of a keyboard. The late 2000s and early 2010s saw a shift in smartphone interfaces away from devices with physical keyboards and keypads to ones with large finger-operated capacitive touchscreens. The first phone of any kind with
1710-612: A fingerprint sensor. In October 2016, it was announced that BlackBerry will be working with the Ford Motor Company of Canada to develop software for the car manufacturer's connected vehicles. In February 2017, a $ 20m class action lawsuit against BlackBerry was announced by the former employees of the company. In March 2017, BB Merah Putih announced the BlackBerry Aurora, an Indonesian-made and sold device, running an operating system based on Android 7.0 out of
1805-404: A large capacitive touchscreen as the sole means of interaction, and led to the decline of earlier, keyboard- and keypad-focused platforms. Later, navigation keys such as the home , back , menu , task and search buttons have also been increasingly replaced by nonphysical touch keys, then virtual, simulated on-screen navigation keys, commonly with access combinations such as a long press of
1900-529: A large capacitive touchscreen was the LG Prada , announced by LG in December 2006. This was a fashionable feature phone created in collaboration with Italian luxury designer Prada with a 3" 240 x 400 pixel screen, a 2-Megapixel digital camera with 144p video recording ability, an LED flash , and a miniature mirror for self portraits. In January 2007, Apple Computer introduced the iPhone . It had
1995-464: A large touchscreen for direct finger input as its main means of interaction. The iPhone's operating system was also a shift away from older operating systems (which older phones supported and which were adapted from PDAs and feature phones ) to an operative system powerful enough to not require using a limited, stripped down web browser that can only render pages specially formatted using technologies such as WML , cHTML , or XHTML and instead ran
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#17327915810622090-455: A lesser extent, handheld video game consoles , e-reader devices, pocket calculators , and GPS tracking units . Since the early 2010s, improved hardware and faster wireless communication (due to standards such as LTE and later 5G NR) have bolstered the growth of the smartphone industry . As of 2014, over a billion smartphones are sold globally every year. In 2019 alone, 1.54 billion smartphone units were shipped worldwide. 75.05 percent of
2185-481: A limited amount of cellular Internet access. PDA and mobile phone manufacturers competed in reducing the size of devices. The bulk of these smartphones combined with their high cost and expensive data plans, plus other drawbacks such as expansion limitations and decreased battery life compared to separate standalone devices, generally limited their popularity to " early adopters " and business users who needed portable connectivity. In March 1996, Hewlett-Packard released
2280-752: A major partnership with Microsoft, under which it would exclusively use Windows Phone on all of its future smartphones, and integrate Microsoft's Bing search engine and Bing Maps (which, as part of the partnership, would also license Nokia Maps data) into all future devices. The announcement led to the abandonment of both Symbian, as well as MeeGo —a Linux-based mobile platform it was co-developing with Intel. Nokia's low-end Lumia 520 saw strong demand and helped Windows Phone gain niche popularity in some markets, overtaking BlackBerry in global market share in 2013. In mid-June 2012, Meizu released its mobile operating system, Flyme OS . Many of these attempts to compete with Android and iPhone were short-lived. Over
2375-594: A new joint venture company called BB Merah Putih to "source, distribute, and market BlackBerry handsets in Indonesia". On October 25, 2016, BlackBerry released the BlackBerry DTEK60 , the second device in the DTEK series, manufactured and designed by TCL . The device features a 5.5-inch Quad-HD touch screen display running on Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820 processor with support for Quick Charge 3.0, USB Type-C, and
2470-618: A physical keyboard was "coming shortly". The same day, BlackBerry unveiled a mid-range Android model with only an on-screen keyboard, the BlackBerry DTEK50 , powered by the then latest version of Android Marshmallow (version 6.0). (The Priv could be upgraded to the same version of the Android operating system as well.) This device featured a 5.2-inch full high-definition (or in other words, a FHD), display. BlackBerry chief security officer David Kleidermacher stressed data security during
2565-459: A punitive measure due to the willful nature of the infringement. He also instructed RIM to pay NTP's legal fees of US$ 4.5 million and issued an injunction ordering RIM to cease and desist infringing the patents—this decision would have resulted in the closure of BlackBerry's systems in the US. RIM appealed all of the findings of the court. The injunction and other remedies were stayed pending the outcome of
2660-531: A redesigned user interface, support for gestures such as pinch-to-zoom, and a new web browser based on the same WebKit rendering engine used by the iPhone. The following year, RIM released BlackBerry OS 7 and new models in the Bold and Torch ranges, which included a new Bold with a touchscreen alongside its keyboard, and the Torch 9860—the first BlackBerry phone to not include a physical keyboard. In 2013, it replaced
2755-416: A rotary knob ring around the lens and a tripod mount. While screen sizes have increased, manufacturers have attempted to make smartphones thinner at the expense of utility and sturdiness, since a thinner frame is more vulnerable to bending and has less space for components, namely battery capacity. The iPhone and later touchscreen-only Android devices together popularized the slate form factor , based on
2850-571: A version of Apple's Safari browser that could render full websites not specifically designed for mobile phones. Later Apple shipped a software update that gave the iPhone a built-in on-device App Store allowing direct wireless downloads of third-party software. This kind of centralized App Store and free developer tools quickly became the new main paradigm for all smartphone platforms for software development , distribution , discovery, installation , and payment, in place of expensive developer tools that required official approval to use and
2945-757: The BlackBerry KeyOne —which was known for having a physical keyboard below its 4.5 inch touchscreen and a long battery life—and was the last device to be designed internally by BlackBerry. Also in 2017, BlackBerry Mobile, under their partner license agreements, released the BlackBerry Aurora , BlackBerry KeyOne L/E BLACK, and the BlackBerry Motion . In June 2018, the BlackBerry Key2 was launched in international markets, and in India by licensee Optiemus Infracom. The Key2 sports
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3040-497: The BlackBerry Priv , a slider, with a German made camera lens with 18 megapixels, phablet that utilizes the Android operating system with additional security and productivity-oriented features inspired by the BlackBerry operating systems. However, BlackBerry COO Marty Beard told Bloomberg that "The company's never said that we would not build another BB10 device." On July 26, 2016, the company hinted that another model with
3135-580: The Indonesian market, Optiemus Infracom for the South Asian market, and BlackBerry Mobile (a trade name of TCL Technology ) for all other markets. Historically, BlackBerry devices used a proprietary operating system—known as BlackBerry OS —developed by BlackBerry Limited. In 2013, BlackBerry introduced BlackBerry 10 , a major revamp of the platform based on the QNX operating system. BlackBerry 10
3230-548: The Inter@ctive Pager 900, announced on September 18, 1996. The Inter@ctive Pager 900 was a clamshell -type device that allowed two-way paging. After the success of the 900, the Inter@ctive Pager 800 was created for IBM, which bought US$ 10 million worth of them on February 4, 1998. The next device to be released was the Inter@ctive Pager 950, on August 26, 1998. The first device to carry the BlackBerry name
3325-599: The J-SH04 , a Sharp J-Phone model sold in Japan in November 2000. It could instantly transmit pictures via cell phone telecommunication . By the mid-2000s, higher-end cell phones commonly had integrated digital cameras. In 2003 camera phones outsold stand-alone digital cameras, and in 2006 they outsold film and digital stand-alone cameras. Five billion camera phones were sold in five years, and by 2007 more than half of
3420-1033: The Japanese market , such as mobile payments and shopping, near-field communication (NFC) allowing mobile wallet functionality to replace smart cards for transit fares, loyalty cards, identity cards, event tickets, coupons, money transfer, etc., downloadable content like musical ringtones , games , and comics , and 1seg mobile television . Phones built by Japanese manufacturers used custom firmware , however, and did not yet feature standardized mobile operating systems designed to cater to third-party application development , so their software and ecosystems were akin to very advanced feature phones . As with other feature phones, additional software and services required partnerships and deals with providers. The degree of integration between phones and carriers, unique phone features, non-standardized platforms, and tailoring to Japanese culture made it difficult for Japanese manufacturers to export their phones, especially when demand
3515-589: The Nokia 9000 Communicator , a digital cellular PDA based on the Nokia 2110 with an integrated system based on the PEN/GEOS 3.0 operating system from Geoworks . The two components were attached by a hinge in what became known as a clamshell design , with the display above and a physical QWERTY keyboard below. The PDA provided e-mail ; calendar, address book, calculator and notebook applications; text-based Web browsing; and could send and receive faxes. When closed,
3610-566: The Nokia N8 , Sony Ericsson Satio , and Samsung M8910 Pixon12 feature phone had 12 MP. The main camera of the 2009 Nokia N86 uniquely features a three-level aperture lens. The Altek Leo, a 14-megapixel smartphone with 3x optical zoom lens and 720p HD video camera was released in late 2010. In 2011, the same year the Nintendo 3DS was released, HTC unveiled the Evo 3D , a 3D phone with
3705-555: The OmniGo 700LX , a modified HP 200LX palmtop PC with a Nokia 2110 mobile phone piggybacked onto it and ROM -based software to support it. It had a 640 × 200 resolution CGA compatible four-shade gray-scale LCD screen and could be used to place and receive calls, and to create and receive text messages, emails and faxes. It was also 100% DOS 5.0 compatible, allowing it to run thousands of existing software titles, including early versions of Windows . In August 1996, Nokia released
3800-511: The Pre 3 and HP TouchPad tablet. As part of a proposed divestment of its consumer business to focus on enterprise software, HP abruptly ended development of future webOS devices in August 2011, and sold the rights to webOS to LG Electronics in 2013, for use as a smart TV platform. Research in Motion introduced the vertical-sliding BlackBerry Torch and BlackBerry OS 6 in 2010, which featured
3895-500: The Texas -based startup OnwardMobility signed a new licensing agreement with BlackBerry Limited to develop a new 5G BlackBerry smartphone. OnwardMobility was cooperating with BlackBerry Limited and FIH Mobile (a subsidiary of Foxconn ) as they "sought to revitalize the iconic BlackBerry brand through an Android-based, next-gen Wi-Fi device." However, in a statement released on February 18, 2022, OnwardMobility said that not only would
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3990-542: The US Department of Defense (DOD) filed a brief stating that an injunction shutting down the BlackBerry service while excluding government users was unworkable. The DOD also stated that the BlackBerry was crucial for national security given the large number of government users. On February 9, 2006, RIM announced that it had developed software workarounds that would not infringe the NTP patents, and would implement those if
4085-627: The exponential scaling and miniaturization of MOS transistors down to sub-micron levels ( Moore's law ), the improved lithium-ion battery , faster digital mobile data networks ( Edholm's law ), and more mature software platforms that allowed mobile device ecosystems to develop independently of data providers . In the 2000s, NTT DoCoMo 's i-mode platform, BlackBerry , Nokia 's Symbian platform, and Windows Mobile began to gain market traction, with models often featuring QWERTY keyboards or resistive touchscreen input and emphasizing access to push email and wireless internet . In
4180-479: The installed base of all mobile phones were camera phones. Sales of separate cameras peaked in 2008. Many early smartphones did not have cameras at all, and earlier models that had them had low performance and insufficient image and video quality that could not compete with budget pocket cameras and fulfill user's needs. By the beginning of the 2010s almost all smartphones had an integrated digital camera. The decline in sales of stand-alone cameras accelerated due to
4275-413: The internet , business applications, mobile payments , and multimedia functionality, including music, video, gaming , radio , and television . Smartphones typically contain a number of metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) integrated circuit (IC) chips, include various sensors that can be leveraged by pre-installed and third-party software (such as a magnetometer , a proximity sensor , a barometer ,
4370-478: The " Pocket PC " versions of what was later Windows Mobile , and the UIQ interface that was originally designed for pen-based PDAs on Symbian OS devices resulted in some early smartphones having stylus-based interfaces. These allowed for virtual keyboards and handwriting input, thus also allowing easy entry of Asian characters. By the mid-2000s, the majority of smartphones had a physical QWERTY keyboard. Most used
4465-416: The " rocket docket ", and is particularly efficient at trying patent cases. The jury eventually found that the NTP patents were valid; furthermore, the jury established that RIM had infringed the patents in a "willful" manner, and the infringement had cost NTP US$ 33 million in damages (the greater of a reasonable royalty or lost profits). The judge, James R. Spencer , increased the damages to US$ 53 million as
4560-503: The 1990s, or lithium-ion batteries used in modern smartphones. The term "smart phone" (in two words) was not coined until a year after the introduction of the Simon, appearing in print as early as 1995, describing AT&T's PhoneWriter Communicator. The term "smartphone" (as one word) was first used by Ericsson in 1997 to describe a new device concept, the GS88 . Beginning in
4655-602: The BB10 mobile operating system. On December 17, 2014, the BlackBerry Classic was introduced; it is meant to be more in line with the former Bold series, incorporating navigation buttons similar to the previous BlackBerry OS devices. When it was discontinued in June 2016, it was the last BlackBerry with a keyboard that dominates the front of the phone in the classic style. In September 2015, BlackBerry officially unveiled
4750-490: 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." On December 17, 2013, BlackBerry announced
4845-468: The Indonesian devices built by the company. Additionally, the operational status of Optiemus is unknown as of September 2020, as there have not been any updates posted regarding BlackBerry products in India since 2018. In October 2023, it was announced that Blackberry Chief Operating Officer, John Chen would be leaving the company after ten years. Richard Lynch will take over as interim CEO and chair of
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#17327915810624940-574: The US Federal Government. In January 2006 the US Supreme Court refused to hear RIM's appeal of the holding of liability for patent infringement, and the matter was returned to a lower court. The prior granted injunction preventing all RIM sales in the US and use of the BlackBerry device might have been enforced by the presiding district court judge had the two parties been unable to reach a settlement. On February 9, 2006,
5035-420: The appeals. In March 2005 during appeal, RIM and NTP tried to negotiate a settlement of their dispute; the settlement was to be for $ 450 million. Negotiations broke down due to other issues. On June 10, 2005, the matter returned to the courts. In early November 2005 the US Department of Justice filed a brief requesting that RIM's service be allowed to continue because of the large number of BlackBerry users in
5130-558: The board. In 2000 NTP sent notice of its wireless email patents to a number of companies and offered to license the patents to them. NTP brought a patent-infringement lawsuit against one of the companies, Research In Motion, in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia . This court is well known for its strict adherence to timetables and deadlines, sometimes referred to as
5225-510: The box. In March 2018, it was announced that BlackBerry would be working with Jaguar Land Rover to develop software for the car manufacturer's vehicles. In June 2018, BlackBerry in partnership with TCL Mobile and Optiemus Infracom launched the KEY2 at a global launch in New York. This is the third device to sport a keyboard while running Google's Android OS. In 2017, BlackBerry Mobile released
5320-470: The cause of the service disruptions. The outage intensified calls by shareholders for a shake-up in the company's leadership. Some estimates by BlackBerry are that the company lost between $ 50 million to $ 54 million due to global email service failure and outage in 2011. Many BlackBerry retail stores operated outside North America , such as in Thailand , Indonesia , United Arab Emirates . In December 2007
5415-430: The company announced that it would also exit the hardware market to focus more on software and its enterprise middleware, and began to license the BlackBerry brand and its Android distribution to third-party OEMs such as TCL for future devices. In September 2013, Microsoft announced its intent to acquire Nokia's mobile device business for $ 7.1 billion, as part of a strategy under CEO Steve Ballmer for Microsoft to be
5510-427: The course of the decade, the two platforms became a clear duopoly in smartphone sales and market share, with BlackBerry, Windows Phone, and other operating systems eventually stagnating to little or no measurable market share. In 2015, BlackBerry began to pivot away from its in-house mobile platforms in favor of producing Android devices, focusing on a security-enhanced distribution of the software. The following year,
5605-408: The development of the new BlackBerry device not be moving forward, but the company itself would be shutting down, as well. On November 24, 2010, Research In Motion (RIM) removed Kik Messenger from BlackBerry App World and limited the functionality of the software for its users. RIM also sued Kik Interactive for patent infringement and misuse of trademarks . In October 2013, the companies settled
5700-462: The device could be used as a digital cellular telephone. In June 1999 Qualcomm released the "pdQ Smartphone", a CDMA digital PCS smartphone with an integrated Palm PDA and Internet connectivity. Subsequent landmark devices included: In 1999, Japanese wireless provider NTT DoCoMo launched i-mode , a new mobile internet platform which provided data transmission speeds up to 9.6 kilobits per second, and access web services available through
5795-478: The early 1990s, IBM engineer Frank Canova realised that chip-and-wireless technology was becoming small enough to use in handheld devices . The first commercially available device that could be properly referred to as a "smartphone" began as a prototype called "Angler" developed by Canova in 1992 while at IBM and demonstrated in November of that year at the COMDEX computer industry trade show. A refined version
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#17327915810625890-466: The iPhone; Palm unveiled a new platform known as webOS for its Palm Pre in late-2009 to replace Palm OS , which featured a focus on a task-based "card" metaphor and seamless synchronization and integration between various online services (as opposed to the then-conventional concept of a smartphone needing a PC to serve as a "canonical, authoritative repository" for user data). HP acquired Palm in 2010 and released several other webOS devices, including
5985-526: The increasing use of smartphones with rapidly improving camera technology for casual photography, easier image manipulation , and abilities to directly share photos through the use of apps and web-based services. By 2011, cell phones with integrated cameras were selling hundreds of millions per year. In 2015, digital camera sales were 35.395 million units or only less than a third of digital camera sales numbers at their peak and also slightly less than film camera sold number at their peak. Contributing to
6080-410: The injunction was enforced. On March 3, 2006, after a stern warning from Judge Spencer, RIM and NTP announced that they had settled their dispute. Under the terms of the settlement, RIM has agreed to pay NTP $ 612.5 million (USD) in a "full and final settlement of all claims." In a statement, RIM said that "all terms of the agreement have been finalized and the litigation against RIM has been dismissed by
6175-405: The interim arbitration decision announced on April 12, 2017. Following a joint stipulation by the parties, the arbitration panel has issued a final award providing for the payment by Qualcomm to BlackBerry of a total amount of U.S.$ 940,000,000 including interest and attorneys' fees, net of certain royalties due from BlackBerry for calendar 2016 and the first quarter of calendar 2017. In summer 2020,
6270-773: The keyboards on most of its devices and software services that ran through its own servers. At its peak in September 2011, there were 85 million BlackBerry subscribers worldwide. However, BlackBerry lost its dominant position in the market due to the success of the Android and iOS platforms; its numbers had fallen to 23 million in March 2016, a decline of almost three-quarters. On September 28, 2016, BlackBerry Limited announced it would cease designing its own BlackBerry devices in favor of licensing to partners to design, manufacture, and market. The original licensors were BB Merah Putih for
6365-532: The launch, indicating that this model included built-in malware protection and encryption of all user information. Industry observers pointed out that the DTEK50 is a re-branded version of the Alcatel Idol 4 with additional security-oriented software customizations, manufactured and designed by TCL . In September 2016, BlackBerry Limited agreed to a licensing partnership with an Indonesian company to set up
6460-440: The lawsuit, with the terms undisclosed. In 2018 it was reported that BlackBerry would be filing legal action against Facebook over perceived intellectual property infringements within both Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp as well as with Instagram . They settled for an undisclosed amount on the 15th of January 2021. At various stages of the company's history it suffered occasional service outages that have been referred to in
6555-533: The legacy BlackBerry OS with a revamped, QNX -based platform known as BlackBerry 10 , with the all-touch BlackBerry Z10 and keyboard-equipped Q10 as launch devices. In 2010, Microsoft unveiled a replacement for Windows Mobile known as Windows Phone , featuring a new touchscreen-centric user interface built around flat design and typography, a home screen with "live tiles" containing feeds of updates from apps, as well as integrated Microsoft Office apps. In February 2011, Nokia announced that it had entered into
6650-545: The main image with a macro focus shot . In 2007 the Nokia N95 was notable as a smartphone that had a 5.0 Megapixel (MP) camera, when most others had cameras with around 3 MP or less than 2 MP. Some specialized feature phones like the LG Viewty , Samsung SGH-G800 , and Sony Ericsson K850i , all released later that year, also had 5.0 MP cameras. By 2010 5.0 MP cameras were common; a few smartphones had 8.0 MP cameras and
6745-405: The media as "embarrassing". In 2005 the company suffered a relatively short-term outage reportedly among a small handful of North America carriers. The service was restored after several hours. In 2007 the e-mail service suffered an outage which led for calls by some questioning the integrity towards BlackBerry's perceived centralized system. In 2009 the company had an outage reportedly covering
6840-526: The mid-to-late 1990s, many people who had mobile phones carried a separate dedicated PDA device, running early versions of operating systems such as Palm OS , Newton OS , Symbian or Windows CE / Pocket PC . These operating systems would later evolve into early mobile operating systems . Most of the "smartphones" in this era were hybrid devices that combined these existing familiar PDA OSes with basic phone hardware. The results were devices that were bulkier than either dedicated mobile phones or PDAs, but allowed
6935-534: The more commonly known convergent BlackBerry 5810 smartphone was released, which supports push email, mobile telephone, text messaging, Internet faxing , Web browsing and other wireless information services. BlackBerry gained market share 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
7030-671: The platform such as online shopping. NTT DoCoMo's i-mode used cHTML , a language which restricted some aspects of traditional HTML in favor of increasing data speed for the devices. Limited functionality, small screens and limited bandwidth allowed for phones to use the slower data speeds available. The rise of i-mode helped NTT DoCoMo accumulate an estimated 40 million subscribers by the end of 2001, and ranked first in market capitalization in Japan and second globally. Japanese cell phones increasingly diverged from global standards and trends to offer other forms of advanced services and smartphone-like functionality that were specifically tailored to
7125-561: The release of the Z10 and Q10 smartphones. Both models consisted of touch screens: the Z10 features an all-touch design and the Q10 combines a QWERTY keyboard with touchscreen features. On March 5, 2013, BlackBerry announced the signature of a large contract to secure German government Data and Voice communications. Angela Merkel signed the contract publicly and appeared at Cebit along with BlackBerry Europe Managing Director, Herve Liboureau. During
7220-526: The rest of the world. Phones that made effective use of any significant data connectivity were still rare outside Japan until the introduction of the Danger Hiptop in 2002, which saw moderate success among U.S. consumers as the T-Mobile Sidekick. Later, in the mid-2000s, business users in the U.S. started to adopt devices based on Microsoft's Windows Mobile , and then BlackBerry smartphones from Research In Motion . American users popularized
7315-412: The rise in popularity of smartphones being used over dedicated cameras for photography, smaller pocket cameras have difficulty producing bokeh in images, but nowadays, some smartphones have dual-lens cameras that reproduce the bokeh effect easily, and can even rearrange the level of bokeh after shooting. This works by capturing multiple images with different focus settings, then combining the background of
7410-660: The rising popularity of the iPhone in the late 2000s, the majority of smartphones have featured thin, slate-like form factors with large, capacitive touch screens with support for multi-touch gestures rather than physical keyboards. Most modern smartphones have the ability for users to download or purchase additional applications from a centralized app store . They often have support for cloud storage and cloud synchronization, and virtual assistants . Smartphones have largely replaced personal digital assistant (PDA) devices, handheld/palm-sized PCs , portable media players (PMP), point-and-shoot cameras , camcorders , and, to
7505-706: The second financial quarter of 2013, BlackBerry sold 6.8 million handsets, but was eclipsed 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 unfavorable 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
7600-562: The standalone handset can when necessary be inserted into a tablet -sized screen unit with integrated supportive battery and used as such. In 2013 and 2014, Samsung experimented with the hybrid combination of compact camera and smartphone, releasing the Galaxy S4 Zoom and K Zoom , each equipped with integrated 10× optical zoom lens and manual parameter settings (including manual exposure and focus) years before these were widely adapted among smartphones. The S4 Zoom additionally has
7695-542: The task key to simulate a short menu key press, as with home button to search. More recent "bezel-less" types have their screen surface space extended to the unit's front bottom to compensate for the display area lost for simulating the navigation keys. While virtual keys offer more potential customizability, their location may be inconsistent among systems depending on screen rotation and software used. Multiple vendors attempted to update or replace their existing smartphone platforms and devices to better-compete with Android and
7790-467: The term "CrackBerry" in 2006 due to the BlackBerry's addictive nature. In the U.S., the high cost of data plans and relative rarity of devices with Wi-Fi capabilities that could avoid cellular data network usage kept adoption of smartphones mainly to business professionals and " early adopters ." Outside the U.S. and Japan, Nokia was seeing success with its smartphones based on Symbian , originally developed by Psion for their personal organisers, and it
7885-432: The time that a touchscreen could not completely replace a physical keyboard and buttons. Android is based around a modified Linux kernel, again providing more power than mobile operating systems adapted from PDAs and feature phones. The first Android device, the horizontal-sliding HTC Dream , was released in September 2008. In 2012, Asus started experimenting with a convertible docking system named PadFone , where
7980-515: The trackball with the introduction of the Pearl series, which allowed four-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 , SouthernLINC , NII Holdings , and Mike also incorporate a push-to-talk (PTT) feature, similar to a two-way radio . On January 30, 2013, BlackBerry announced
8075-847: The whole of North America. At 2011-10-10 10:00 UTC began a multi-day outage in Europe, the Middle East and Africa , affecting millions of BlackBerry users. There was another outage the following day. By October 12, 2011, the BlackBerry Internet Service went down in North America. Research In Motion attributed data overload due to switch failures in their two data centres in Waterloo in Canada and Slough in England as
8170-415: The world population were smartphone users as of 2020. Early smartphones were marketed primarily towards the enterprise market, attempting to bridge the functionality of standalone PDA devices with support for cellular telephony , but were limited by their bulky form, short battery life , slow analog cellular networks, and the immaturity of wireless data services. These issues were eventually resolved with
8265-506: Was coined by the marketing company Lexicon Branding . The name was chosen out of about 40 potential names, because of the resemblance of the keyboard's buttons to that of the drupelets that compose the blackberry fruit, and the instant pronunciation which reflected the speed of this push email system. The original BlackBerry devices, the RIM 850 and 857, used the DataTAC network. In 2002,
8360-401: Was manufactured by Mitsubishi Electric , which integrated features with its own cellular radio technologies. It featured a liquid-crystal display (LCD) and PC Card support. The Simon was commercially unsuccessful, particularly due to its bulky form factor and limited battery life , using NiCad batteries rather than the nickel–metal hydride batteries commonly used in mobile phones in
8455-435: Was marketed to consumers in 1994 by BellSouth under the name Simon Personal Communicator . In addition to placing and receiving cellular calls , the touchscreen-equipped Simon could send and receive faxes and emails . It included an address book, calendar, appointment scheduler, calculator, world time clock, and notepad, as well as other visionary mobile applications such as maps, stock reports and news. The IBM Simon
8550-431: Was meant to replace the aging BlackBerry OS platform with a new system that was more in line with the user experiences of Android and iOS platforms. In 2015, BlackBerry began releasing Android-based smartphones, beginning with the BlackBerry Priv . BlackBerry , a comedy-drama film about the rise and fall of BlackBerry, was released in 2023. Research in Motion (RIM), founded in Waterloo, Ontario , first developed
8645-541: Was so high in Japan that the companies did not feel the need to look elsewhere for additional profits. The rise of 3G technology in other markets and non-Japanese phones with powerful standardized smartphone operating systems , app stores , and advanced wireless network capabilities allowed non-Japanese phone manufacturers to finally break in to the Japanese market, gradually adopting Japanese phone features like emojis , mobile payments, NFC, etc. and spreading them to
8740-767: Was succeeded by Satya Nadella (who has placed a larger focus on software and cloud computing) as CEO of Microsoft, it took a $ 7.6 billion write-off on the Nokia assets in July 2015, and laid off nearly the entire Microsoft Mobile unit in May 2016. Prior to the completion of the sale to Microsoft, Nokia released a series of Android-derived smartphones for emerging markets known as Nokia X , which combined an Android-based platform with elements of Windows Phone and Nokia's feature phone platform Asha , using Microsoft and Nokia services rather than Google. The first commercial camera phone
8835-482: Was the Kyocera Visual Phone VP-210 , released in Japan in May 1999. It was called a "mobile videophone" at the time, and had a 110,000- pixel front-facing camera . It could send up to two images per second over Japan's Personal Handy-phone System (PHS) cellular network , and store up to 20 JPEG digital images , which could be sent over e-mail . The first mass-market camera phone was
8930-510: Was the BlackBerry 850, an email pager, released January 19, 1999. Although identical in appearance to the 950, the 850 was the first device to integrate email and the name Inter@ctive Pager was no longer used to brand the device. The first BlackBerry device, the 850, was introduced in 1999 as a two-way pager in Munich, Germany. BlackBerry was a solution devised by RIM for delivering e-mail over several different wireless networks. The name BlackBerry
9025-603: Was the most popular smartphone OS in Europe during the middle to late 2000s. Initially, Nokia's Symbian smartphones were focused on business with the Eseries , similar to Windows Mobile and BlackBerry devices at the time. From 2002 onwards, Nokia started producing consumer-focused smartphones, popularized by the entertainment-focused Nseries . Until 2010, Symbian was the world's most widely used smartphone operating system. The touchscreen personal digital assistant (PDA)–derived nature of adapted operating systems like Palm OS ,
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