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Blackberry settled on a new CEO.

After over a month with interim CEO and ex-Verizon CTO Richard Lynch, Blackberry gave the job to John Giamatteo, who led its cybersecurity business. Lynch will stay on and chair its board of directors. Giamatteo took over for ex-CEO John Chen.

Blackberry has also decided not to take its IoT business public after all, as it said in October it would after spinning the division off from its cybersecurity branch.


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Can you name BlackBerry’s CEO?

If you can, then you my friend are a Waterloo supernerd. But it’s wasted knowledge as John Chen is retiring next week, after serving as CEO since 2013, six years after the iPhone (and later Android) put the brakes on Research In Motion. Stepping into the roll as interim CEO will be Richard Lynch, BlackBerry board member and ex-Verizon CTO.


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BlackBerry is splitting up.

It's going to separate its IoT and cybersecurity businesses, reports Reuters, and is planning an IPO for the IoT side of the house next fiscal year. We’ll see how that goes!

We mourned the end of BlackBerry devices running BlackBerry’s software in December 2021. But earlier this year, we got to relive the history of those devices thanks to the BlackBerry movie — which is a movie I still need to see.


Are you going to see BlackBerry this weekend?

If you do, make sure you listen to our interview with Matt Johnson, who directed the movie and also plays Doug, the headband-wearing sidekick. We talked about his favorite and least-favorite tech movies, why BlackBerry lost to the iPhone, and why the world might still want and need something like it.

If you’re not planning to see the movie? You should. It’s great.


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Youtube
“There was a visionary who didn’t see that there was a better vision out there.”

As always, if you’re not a fan of The Always Sunny Podcast, it’s time to change that. This week’s a good one even if you’re not into It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, though, because the gang talks about BlackBerry, which stars Glenn Howerton as Research In Motion co-CEO Jim Balsillie, and comes out this Friday.

The BlackBerry stuff starts about 30 minutes in. It’s got lots of fun takes on the iPhone, and behind-the-scenes stories about the movie.


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Would you buy a BlackBerry in 2023?

Not the new ones, whoever is making those now. I mean a new version of the old idea, about a phone that made you more productive but didn’t try to capture all your time and money. BlackBerry director Matt Johnson, who we interviewed on The Vergecast this week, thinks you might. I kind of think I would.

(This whole episode is really fun, by the way: we talked about computer-screen movies, directors commentary, and much more. Check it out!)


BlackBerry director Matt Johnson on why the iPhone won and why most tech movies suck

‘It’s so weird to see, now, a culture trying to recapture whatever it was that the BlackBerry was trying to do at first.’

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The Verge
Here’s our 2012 deep dive into Blackberry’s downfall.

The Research in Motion story is back in the news because of the (great-looking!) Blackberry movie that’s set to hit on May 12th — and we covered the story intensely during our early years when it wasn’t a guarantee that the iPhone and Android would come to dominate the smartphone market. Here’s our deep-dive feature from back then, which holds up. (Apart from the layout being a little broken. Apologies — it has been a long decade for legacy web pages.)


Here’s how excited I am to see the BlackBerry movie.

Seriously, it looks great.


Former BlackBerry co-CEO Jim Balsillie was very excited for the Playbook, a tablet you either never heard of or forgot about at least a decade ago.
Former BlackBerry co-CEO Jim Balsillie was very excited for the Playbook, a tablet you either never heard of or forgot about at least a decade ago.
Photo: Aly Song / Reuters

The BlackBerry Storm showed why you should never turn a touchscreen into a button

Button of the Month: the BlackBerry Storm’s SurePress screen