7 Things you Probably Didn’t Know about the Blackberry

Early this year Research in Motion sold their fifty-millionth BlackBerry. The rise of the Waterloo, ON based company has become the stuff of legend. The dedication of their followers inspired the phrase “CrackBerry”, a term so apt that the November 2006 Webster’s New World College Dictionary named “CrackBerry” the “New Word of the Year.” Blackberry users are obsessed with the device and the company that spawned it. But there may be some things about this technology they don’t know. We count them down in “7 Things you Probably Didn’t know about the BlackBerry”.

(Sources: “Blackberry: The Inside Story of Research in Motion”, by Rod McQueen, Coyotes.NHL.com. RIM.com, http://www.washingtonpost.com, http://crackberry.com)

If all Blackberries ever sold were placed end to end, the line would stretch from one end of Canada to the other; more than 3400 miles

The weight of all Blackberries sold is equal to 300 times the weight of the entire Phoenix Coyotes roster

In the third quarter of 2009 RIM added 4.4 million subscribers, a number equal to the population of Ireland

A recent poll showed that 9140 out of USA House of Representatives 9226 staff use Blackberrys, only 86 use iPhones.

On July 11th, 2010, at the moment Spanish midfielder Andrés Iniesta scored the World Cup winning goal, BlackBerry Messenger traffic increased by 280%

The Blackberry contains 16 million lines of code

"Blade", "Strawberry", "Outrigger" and "Byline" were all rejected before RIM settled on the name "Blackberry".

About The Author / Nick Waddell

Cantech Letter founder and editor Nick Waddell has lived in five Canadian provinces and is proud of his country's often overlooked contributions to the world of science and technology. Waddell takes a regular shift on the Canadian media circuit, making appearances on CTV, CBC and BNN, and contributing to publications such as Canadian Business and Business Insider.

Comment

Leodor says:

August 31, 2010 at 11:15 am

The Blackberry did well………How will RIM do over the next year?
tezcatl says:

August 31, 2010 at 10:31 pm

How about a comment re current problems?