16 years ago today, the original BlackBerry was born

The original BlackBerry was born in 1999. The BlackBerry 850 was an email pager that supported email and limited HTML browsing on a monochrome screen. I never got to use one, but I did use a pager from another manufacturer and remember what it was like. The 850 looked like this:

Mobile communications have come a long way in a relatively short period of time. It is very intriguing to see how BlackBerry has evolved over the years and through different stages of mobile communications into the powerful devices that they are today.

Evolving through the fast-paced world of mobile technology is tricky. While new entrants are able to easily jump in with crazy new ideas, old players have to strike a balance in attempting the evolution from old to new. Many often fail.

The BlackBerry has refused to die though its death has been pronounced severally by all and sundry. I doff my hat to the venerable BlackBerry. Happy 16th anniversary!