BlackBerry Brand Check-up: The Name Outlived the Phone
In 2009, BlackBerry phones made up nearly one in five smartphones sold worldwide. Today the company makes no phones at all. It is a smaller software business built on QNX, the operating system inside millions of cars, and on secure communications for governments. We look at how the phone business failed, and what the BlackBerry name has to carry now.
Key takeaways
- BlackBerry’s share of worldwide smartphone sales by operating system fell from 19.9% in 2009 to 0.0% in the last quarter of 2016, according to Gartner.
- At US$4.34 on March 25, 2025, the shares were about 97% below their June 2008 record close of $147.55, though up about 64% from a year earlier.
- The company agreed in 2018 to buy Cylance for US$1.4 billion in cash, and in December 2024 agreed to sell it to Arctic Wolf for $160 million in cash plus shares.
- QNX software runs in more than 255 million vehicles, so the company’s future rests on carmakers and governments, not on the people who once carried BlackBerry phones.
Download the full BlackBerry Brand Check-up (PDF): vital signs, timeline, diagnosis, treatment and sources.
Vital signs
BlackBerry shares closed at US$4.34 on March 25, 2025. The record close was $147.55 on June 19, 2008, when the company was still called Research In Motion (RIM). RIM was once worth about US$83 billion, Bloomberg reported in 2011. Even after a gain of about 64% over the past year, the shares sit about 97% below that record.
The latest full-year results, for the year to February 29, 2024, showed revenue of US$853 million. About a quarter of it, $218 million, came from a one-time sale of legacy patents. In the quarter to November 30, 2024, revenue was $162 million including the Cylance business, with a GAAP net loss of $11 million and adjusted EBITDA of $23 million.
Diagnosis: the buyer changed
RIM built its brand with businesses and governments, which The Globe and Mail called its “most loyal base of customers.” In 2009 BlackBerry still held 19.9% of worldwide smartphone sales, ahead of Apple at 14.4%. But the iPhone changed who made the choice. Co-founder Mike Lazaridis first saw it on television in early 2007. He later recalled telling his staff: “If that thing catches on, we’re competing with a Mac, not a Nokia.”
The BlackBerry had a clear job: keep busy professionals on top of email. The iPhone was hired for a bigger job, and the people holding the phone started to decide. As the Globe put it, “consumers didn’t care so much about battery life or security features.” In our guide to jobs to be done, this is the classic miss. The customer’s job grew, and the product kept serving the old one.
Late answers and a new name
The answers came late. The Storm touchscreen phone failed to give Verizon Wireless the “Apple-killer it coveted”, the Globe reported, and RIM soon dropped it. When the first BlackBerry 10 phones arrived, market observers judged them two years too late.
On January 30, 2013, RIM launched BlackBerry 10 and renamed itself BlackBerry. “From today on, we are BlackBerry everywhere in the world,” said chief executive Thorsten Heins. Nearly eight months later the company warned of a quarterly loss of up to $995 million, including a write-down of $930 million to $960 million on unsold Z10 phones, and said it would cut 4,500 jobs.
In September 2016 BlackBerry stopped designing its own phones and handed hardware to partners that would license its technology and brand. By the last quarter of 2016, Gartner put the BlackBerry operating system’s share of smartphone sales at 0.0%. The company now carried the name of a product it no longer designed.
A security bet that did not hold
The next story was security software. In 2018 BlackBerry agreed to buy Cylance for US$1.4 billion in cash. In December 2024 it agreed to sell Cylance to Arctic Wolf for $160 million in cash, subject to adjustments, plus about 5.5 million Arctic Wolf shares. The sale closed on February 3, 2025. Each turn asks buyers to relearn what BlackBerry is for, and clear brand positioning needs a story that outlasts one deal.
What the brand stands for now
Two businesses remain. QNX software runs in more than 255 million vehicles, and BlackBerry guided to fiscal 2025 IoT revenue of $230 million to $235 million. The other division is Secure Communications, and BlackBerry counts what it calls its large government customers among its buyers. These buyers are carmakers and governments, so this is a B2B marketing task: proof, references and long sales cycles count for more than fame.
The name still draws attention. In January 2021 day traders pushed the shares to a close of $25.10, levels not seen in more than nine years. The spike faded: on March 25, 2024, the shares closed at $2.64.
What growing companies can learn
Watch who makes the buying decision, not only who pays the invoice. Name the company for what it will still do in ten years, not for its best-selling product. And treat each acquisition as a promise to customers about who you are. Reversing it costs more than the price.
This check-up uses public information available on March 25, 2025. It is brand and marketing analysis, not investment advice.
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