BlackBerry is a line of mobile email and smartphone devices developed and designed by Canadian company Research In Motion (RIM) since 1999.
BlackBerry devices are smartphones, designed to function as personal digital assistants, portable media players, internet browsers, gaming devices, and much more. They are primarily known for their ability to send and receive (push) email and instant messages while maintaining a high level of security through on-device message encryption. BlackBerry devices support a large variety of instant messaging features, including BlackBerry Messenger.
BlackBerry accounts for 3% of mobile device sales worldwide in 2011, making its manufacturer RIM the sixth most popular device maker (25% of mobile device sales are smartphones). The consumer BlackBerry Internet Service is available in 91 countries worldwide on over 500 mobile service operators using various mobile technologies. As of October 2011, there were seventy million subscribers worldwide to BlackBerry. At present the Caribbean and Latin America, have the highest penetrations of BlackBerry smartphones worldwide – with up to about 45 per cent in the region having a RIM device.
Modern GSM-based BlackBerry handhelds incorporate an ARM 7, 9 or ARM 11 processor, while older BlackBerry 950 and 957 handhelds used Intel 80386 processors. The latest BlackBerry models (Torch 9850/9860, Torch 9810, and Bold 9900/9930) have a 1.2 GHz MSM8255 Snapdragon Processor, 768 MB system memory), and 8 GB of on-board storage. All BlackBerrys after OS 5 support up to 32 GB microSD cards.
The BlackBerry Bold is a line of smartphones developed by Research in Motion. The family was launched in 2008 with the 9000 Model. In 2009 the form factor was shrunk with the 9700 and the Tour 9630. In 2010 RIM released the 9650 and 9780 refresh with OS6. In 2011 came the 9788 and 9790 along with the current flagship - the 9900/9930 series. The 9900/9930 and 9790 are touchscreen smartphones, released in August and November 2011. The Bold family is known for its distinctive form factor; efficient, finger-friendly QWERTY keyboard, typical BlackBerry messaging capabilities with a distinctive, more premium keyboard than the Curve series. The Bold series is usually more expensive and has more premium materials (eg. leather, soft touch, carbon fiber, metal) unlike the curve (plastic, glossy), and has much better specs. There are two basic form factors with the Bold line, the original larger size on the 9000 and 9900 Series and the "baby bold" form factor the other models have.