Before smartphones became an extension of our existence, before the infinite scroll, and long before TikTok starting shrinking attention spans, there was the king of the keyboard: The BlackBerry. The secure email machine.
The professional’s status symbol. The man behind is was Mike Lazaridis — a brilliant mind with an eye for precision and relentless drive for creativity.
From Istanbul to Ontario
Mike Lazaridis was born in Istanbul, Turkey, to Greek parents in 1961. When he was five years old, his family immigrated to Canada, settling in Windsor, Ontario.
He did grow up in a modest, working-class household. Financial limits were a part of life, but so was his enduring curiosity.
From an early age, Mike was fascinated with how things worked. Radios, TVs, oscilloscopes — if it had a circuit, he cracked it open. One of his claims to fame is that at age 12, he read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica because, in his words, he wanted to “know everything”.
Engineering the future
Later in life, Lazaridis enrolled at the University of Waterloo to study electrical engineering. While still a student in the early 1980s, he founded Research In Motion (RIM) with two partners: Douglas Fregin and later, Jim Balsillie.
Initially, RIM focused on barcode readers and networked LED display systems — specifically tapping into the retail industry to create scanners.
Lazaridis’s genius for wireless communications and effective power management helped RIM ascend the ranks. Possibly his most powerful skill is being able to anticipate the way people wanted to use technology, not just how they could.
BlackBerry: Obsession to Icon
In the late ’90s, Lazaridis and his team at RIM developed a two-way pager that evolved into a handheld email device.
That product would be named BlackBerry, thanks to a marketing firm that thought the tiny keyboard buttons resembled the drupelets on a blackberry fruit (proof that branding is, at times, deliciously arbitrary).
You could send and receive secure emails on the go. For the business world, this was nothing short of sorcery. Executives became addicted — quite literally, hence the nickname “CrackBerry.”
Politicians, celebrities, and corporate warlords all had one. Even Barack Obama clung to his BlackBerry like a digital security blanket.
A missed call from the future
But success is fickle.
While BlackBerry was dominating the early 2000s, the tech world was shifting. In 2007, Apple introduced the iPhone. Lazaridis and co-CEO Balsillie were skeptical.
Who would want a phone without a keyboard? Unfortunately for them, just about everyone.
They underestimated the touch-screen era and overestimated corporate loyalty. BlackBerry was slow to adapt. Their app ecosystem lagged behind, their hardware couldn’t keep up, and their OS looked increasingly archaic.
Users migrated. Market share plummeted. The very thing Lazaridis pioneered—mobile connectivity—left his company in the dust.
By 2012, both Lazaridis and Balsillie had stepped down from RIM. The company eventually changed its name to BlackBerry Limited.
While its smartphones are now considered relics of the past, the company pivoted to cybersecurity and enterprise software — a quiet but still very profitable corner of tech.
Where is Mike Lazaridis now?
Far from disappearing into obscurity, Lazaridis returned to his scientific roots. In 2013, he co-founded the Quantum Valley Investments fund, with the aim of turning Canada into a global hub for quantum computing.
In 1999, Mike Lazaridis dedicated $100 million to launch the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, a research powerhouse based in Waterloo.
He’s not trying to build another BlackBerry; instead, he’s backing the next wave of mind-bending tech. Quantum computing may be one of the most confusing and complex frontiers yet, but Lazaridis is up for the challenge.
Does BlackBerry Still Exist?
Yes — but not how you remember it. BlackBerry no longer makes phones (its final models were discontinued around 2016). The brand was briefly licensed to other manufacturers, but by 2022, support for the legacy devices was cut off.
Today, BlackBerry Limited is a software company specializing in cybersecurity and operating systems for embedded systems, like those in cars and industrial equipment.
In short, BlackBerry morphed from a handheld revolution into a back-end security guardian — an ironic twist for a brand once defined by its outward-facing tech.
A legacy in signals
Mike Lazaridis may have forfeited the smartphone race, but his legacy he ran so the others could run.
He changed how the world communicates, made Canada a global player in tech, and now helps lead the charge in quantum science.
In a world obsessed with likes and meteoric IPOs, Lazaridis reminds us that true innovation doesn’t always end with a standing ovation — sometimes it just keeps building, quietly, into the future.
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