10 Fun Facts about RIM and BlackBerry
by Collin Sorp
28 January 2010
One Comment
Earlier today I was on CIO, I came across this really funny yet random list of ten facts about RIM and BlackBerry. Being the BlackBerry geek that I am, some of these facts were new and native to me, so I had to share it with you folks too.
- 1. The U.S. government uses more than 500,000 BlackBerry smartphones.
- 2. RIM co-CEO and co-founder Mike Lazaridis, taking a page from Bill Gates’ book, dropped out of college before starting the company.
- 3. Lazaridis was born with the first name Mihalis in Instanbul, Turkey.
- 4. Lazaridis accepted an Oscar for technical achievement from actress Anne Heche for RIM’s Digisync Film Barcode Reader.
- 5. The White House installed its first e-mail services under President George H.W. Bush; Florida Governor Jeb Bush in 2006 unveiled his official portrait, featuring a BlackBerry in the background.
- 6. RIM’s first job was a $600K deal with General Motors for networked terminals designed to show displays to assembly line workers.
- 7. The first true BlackBerry, the 950, was code-named LeapFrog.
- 8. Lazaridis said during the early 2000s that there were 16 million lines of code in the BlackBerry.
- 9. In November 2005, Oprah Winfrey gave away BlackBerry 7105t devices to attendees of her pre-Christmas giveaway show.
- 10. The BlackBerry Storm had been known during development as “Thunder”.
-by Collin Sorp
Source: CIO
