The BlackBerry: A Brief History

Introduced in 1999 by the Canadian company Research In Motion (RIM), the BlackBerry has an astonishing list of features, some of which have been incorporated in the years since the BlackBerry's introduction.

RIM has been around since 1984, when it was founded by a group of students from Waterloo University in Ontario, Canada. But it wasn't until the company released its Inter@ctive Pager, which eventually became the BlackBerry, that RIM really hit the big time.

The original BlackBerry boasted a monochrome display and had relatively few features, including email access. The early models didn't have telephone capability, and when that feature was incorporated, it required a separate headset. Eventually, however, RIM added more features to its products, so today's models have daunting feature lists: email access, cellular telephone service, Web access, games, a built-in camera, instant messaging, mapping, and organizer services (including an address book and lists).

In 2005, there was a huge intellectual-property law-suit between RIM and NTP over the BlackBerry. NTP sued RIM for patent infringement, and there was some very real hand-wringing over the possibility that BlackBerries all over North America might get shut down forever. But RIM settled the suit with a reported payment of $450 million to NTP for the right to sub-license the patents used in its BlackBerries.

Today, RIM is moving forward full steam ahead with the release of new products such as the BlackBerry 8100 Pearlarguably the smallest, best-looking, and most functional BlackBerry ever made.