From first-gen smartphones to cybersecurity: BlackBerry CEO on the company’s reinvention

Source Domain: www.euronews.com

Once favoured by corporate professionals in the early 2000s, BlackBerry was one of the first devices to let people send secure emails on the move, long before smartphones became part of everyday life.

Combining push email, web browsing, calls and photography in one device, it became a symbol of secure communication, particularly after the 9/11 attacks when cellular networks struggled.

Many assumed the qwerty keyboard signature faded with the rise of touchscreen smartphones. Instead, it quietly survived and reinvented itself.

Today, BlackBerry operates largely out of public view, focusing on cybersecurity and the Internet of Things (IoT).

The Canadian company remains firmly rooted in the same principles that once defined its phones, BlackBerry’s CEO John Giamatteo told Euronews Next at the World Government Summit in Dubai, UAE.

“Security, trust, and innovation are always what BlackBerry has been about. So while the products and services we sell today can’t be held in the palm of your hand, those same underpinning values of security, trust and innovation continue to guide everything that we deliver to the market,” said Giamatteo.

Rebranded as a cybersecurity firm

BlackBerry faced a major turning point in the late 2000s and early 2010s as Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android reshaped the smartphone market with touchscreen devices and large app ecosystems.

As its handset business discontinued, the company shifted its attention towards security software, an area it had long specialised in.

“When you use the BlackBerry, that feeling of security and trust and basically what we did is we got out of the hardware business, we took all of that software,” said Giamatteo.

According to the CEO, the company now focuses on two main areas: QNX and secure communication services.

QNX is a real-time operating system that is widely used in vehicles, powering software that runs everything from infotainment systems to safety-critical functions such as braking and…

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