How BlackBerry, the phone everyone once wanted to own, got disconnected

On Tuesday, January 4, BlackBerry shut down support for its devices, shut down its OS, email and messaging services and other assorted software. This definitively wrote “finis” to an entire corporate era though admittedly BlackBerry phones had been on life support for quite a while.

The shutdown administered the last rites to an iconic device, and to a pioneering tech concept. When Canadian firm, Res­earch In Motion (RIM), launc­hed the first BlackBerry, or BB as it came to be called, in 1999, it altered corporate practices forever. It found a need that nobo­dy had realised existed; it created a new market