![smartphone881229_960_720.jpg](https://images.hive.blog/DQmT5kjc5LSybciMVGrsQA7mEySzo2VGXBJtf1fUewUHCAi/smartphone-881229_960_720.jpg)

Once a top brand in mobile communications that earned respect among many, BlackBerry ending its support for devices running the original operating system today. I wonder how many still use the old BlackBerry devices. Many have moved on long time ago. Even BlackBerry, the company stopped making its own smartphones back in 2016. I am surprised they didn't give up earlier. 

After stopping making its own devices, BlackBerry decided to only focus on software and licensed its bran and services to TCL Communications Technology Holdings. TCL made devices powered by Android until 2020 when the deal came to an end. Android powered BlackBerry devices will continue to be supported until August of this year. It is safe to say BlackBerry no more.

It is a little bit sad to see game changing companies, brands, technologies disappearing into the history and becoming obsolete forever. But that is the nature of technological evolution. Just creating something new, something awesome, something to solves a problem and being the best of the times is not enough to stay relevant through times. It is the ability to keep up with the innovations, and technological changes and advancement; it is the ability to stay competitive with vision of the future, what makes companies, brands, and technologies truly great.

This story also shows how no company, no brand, no technology is immune from what future may present. Apple may have been the brand and the company that brought better tech, better solutions, better devices that made giants in telecommunications like Nokia disappeared from the space. Yet, Apple too is vulnerable to overall progress in knowledge, technology, and innovation. 

When I recently upgraded my iPhone, for the first time I felt buyers remorse in regards to Apple devices. It wasn't much of an upgrade from my previous iPhone that was a couple of years older. In fact, my older iPhone seemed to be more efficient, productive, and comfortable to use. Apple continues to deliver in quality, and I would hate to see them fail. But are they really keep up with the technological evolutions. That is yet to be seen. Just the fact that they haven't realized the true innovation in bitcoin and crypto space, how it could help their brand and company, suggest it is possible they too are late in this game. Late in adapting to the changes, just like BlackBerry, Nokia, Microsoft and others were.

Success of BlackBerry, however short-lived it might be, was one of the greatest accomplishment. As a technology they were the pioneers in making phones smarter. As a service provider they were pioneers in secure email and messaging communications. As a company they earned trust and respect among professionals of many fields like lawyers, doctors, business people, etc. They were able to secure deals with major companies and governments to offer their devices and services. What they offered was truly revolutionary.

Did they become too complacent? Did they not see the magic of touch screen technologies? Or were they simply unable to innovate again? These questions have been asked and answered in the past and will continue to be the topics of future discussions and perhaps lectures in business schools. 

My personal opinion they obsessively and unreasonably became attached to the physical keyboard and could never see a virtual keyboard could do a better job. I don't blame them. Many had shared the sentiment and couldn't envision physical keyboards on mobile phones going away. At least not that fast. However, true visionaries can see what masses don't. Just having a good business model and business relationships is enough for any tech company to remain relevant. Nokia did the same mistake.

By the time companies like BlackBerry and Nokia realized that capacitive touch screens was the future, and keyboard had to go, it was too late. They did attempt in moving away from physical keyboards and create only touch screen smart phones. But by this time, the competition has moved to the operating system level. It wasn't about physical keyboard or not anymore. It was about better operating system that Apple and Google aggressively were competing against each other with their iOS and Android operating systems. 

During these changes and competition who can get how much of the market share, true winner did emerge. It was Samsung. Samsung saw exactly what was happening. They made all the right moves, even if it meant copying others, at right time. Today Samsung makes one of the best smartphones in the market.

Even thought BlackBerry lost the battle in smartphones space, it never was forgotten. The demonstration of that was shown when it became one of the meme stocks in 2021 alongside GameStop, Nokia, AMC. There are many who still wouldn't want to see companies like these disappear. 

As bitcoin, crypto, decentralized solutions, and web3 becoming the new step in technological innovations, maybe companies like BlackBerry could reemerge with a new vision and new solutions in the future. I believe in the future there will be a need for decentralized devices along with software. It would take a lot of courage for companies to contribute for such efforts, as it requires selfless acts of sharing technology for free without asking anything in return and contributing to open source.

Bye Bye BlackBerry!

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