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How BlackBerry Staged a Comeback by Winning Over Car Companies

After its near-death experience, the tech behemoth is profitable once more

Dubbed “Crackberry” by ardent users—Webster’s New World College Dictionary proclaimed it the Word of the Year in 2006—the impact and influence of the BlackBerry device in the early 2000s could be found everywhere. It featured in pop song titles and explicit rap lyrics; Kim Kardashian was a loyal user; former United States president Barack Obama famously said he was “clinging” to his BlackBerry and that they would have to “pry it out of [his] hands” when he entered office.

After BlackBerry’s mobile business faltered, the company pivoted to cybersecurity and software

QNX, an operating system acquired and owned by BlackBerry, now brings in half of the company’s total revenue

QNX is a critical component used in cars, medicine, and nuclear power due to its ability to handle precision timing

The Blackberry was the signature product of Research In Motion, or RIM. Founded in 1984 by University of Waterloo engineering students Mike Lazaridis and Douglas Fregin, the company paved the way for future smartphones. At its peak in 2009, it commanded at least 43 percent of the US market and 20 percent of the international market. By 2011, 77 million annual subscribers couldn’t get enough of the seemingly indestructible devices and their tactile QWERTY keyboard buttons. But new smartphones, such as the iPhone and Android, kept eating into Blackberry’s market share. Fortunes dwindled quickly, and the company officially changed its name to BlackBerry in 2013 to signal both a fresh start and to maximize on the brand recognition. But within months, a “for sale” sign was up, though ultimately, there would be no deal.

By 2016, the company’s market share had nosedived to 0 percent, according to research firm Gartner. That same year, the company announced it would no longer manufacture its own devices and outsourced production to Chinese electronics company TCL. In January 2022, the company formally decommissioned the BlackBerry service, shutting down the software and infrastructure that underpinned its legacy mobile devices. You might still find BlackBerry-branded phones in the wild, running on Android, but as far as the public was concerned, BlackBerry seemed relegated to the history books.

Yet the groundwork for the company’s future was laid more than a decade earlier, when RIM bought QNX (pronounced “Q-nix”) for $200 million in April 2010. Founded in........

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