While I was out on vacation in Miami I got this email from RIM which for some reason got stuck in my spam folder. They kindly provided us with some great history and fun facts about our favorite device.
- In January, RIM shipped its 50 millionth BlackBerry smartphone.
- Verizon Wireless announced earlier this week that it has already sold 1 million BlackBerry Storm smartphones.
- It was 10 years ago this month that RIM first launched the BlackBerry solution. Today, BlackBerry is available in over 150 countries from over 425 carriers and national distribution partners.
- RIM continues to grow. RIM hired approx. 4,000 employees globally last year and surpassed the 12,000 employee mark in January.
- RIM’s BlackBerry Infrastructure routes over three Petabytes (that’s 3,000,000,000,000,000 bytes) of traffic each month.
I am impressed that RIM has already shipped 50 Million BlackBerrys over 10 years since it first launched. On the other hand the current 21 million subscribers means that people are not upgrading devices that often. I had always heard different dates set for the first BlackBerry launched. Even Wikipedia does not have the month and I have yet to learn the exact date… Let me know if you find it!
