‘I get more meetings because of the brand’: BlackBerry’s CEO on keeping a famous name

In today’s CEO Daily: BlackBerry CEO John Giamatteo on having a corporate name that stands out.

The big leadership story: Tech earnings galore.

The markets: U.S. futures fall on disappointing hyperscaler results.

Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.

Good morning. Interbrand came out with its 2026 Best Global Brands list yesterday. Apple occupies the top spot. It first hit No. 1 in 2013, the year smartphone pioneer BlackBerry fell off the list. I wrote a lot of stories about BlackBerry over the years, from its stunning rise to its precipitous fall. There have been books, case studies, even a “comedy” about co-founders Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis that you can now stream on Netflix. And there’s also a serious company that continues to proudly boast the name BlackBerry, even though it no longer makes BlackBerry handsets and went by the name Research In Motion when it did.

So when I met with BlackBerry CEO John Giamatteo recently, the first question I asked was why he stays attached to such a notorious name. After all, the company now makes its money—more than $600 million and growing this year, compared with close to $20 billion at its height—from a business called BlackBerry Secure Communications and the very popular QNX software that powers more than 275 million smart vehicles and is expanding into robotaxis, medical devices, and........

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