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Home > Witness > The rise and fall of BlackBerry


	Podcast:		Witness
	Episode:		The rise and fall of BlackBerry
	Category:		Society & Culture
	Duration:		00:09:50
	Publish Date:		2025-08-21 06:00:00
	Description:		In the early 2000s, BlackBerry was the phone that ruled the world. But within a decade, it collapsed, overtaken by the touch screen revolution. Sam Gruet speaks to former co-CEO Jim Balsillie about BlackBerry’s meteoric rise, its battle against Apple, and the moment he knew it was all over. Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more. Recent episodes explore everything from the death of Adolf Hitler, the first spacewalk and the making of the movie Jaws, to celebrity tortoise Lonesome George, the Kobe earthquake and the invention of superglue. We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: Eva Peron – Argentina’s Evita; President Ronald Reagan and his famous ‘tear down this wall’ speech; Thomas Keneally on why he wrote Schindler’s List; and Jacques Derrida, France’s ‘rock star’ philosopher. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the civil rights swimming protest; the disastrous D-Day rehearsal; and the death of one of the world’s oldest languages. (Photo: BlackBerry phone in 2002. Credit: Rob Homer/Fairfax Media via Getty Images)
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