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2022 has already a celebrity life, and honestly it's one that everyone is surprised is still alive. If you took Blackberry Phones in your death pool congratulations! As of yesterday, "all classic BlackBerry smartphones running versions of BlackBerry OS will no longer work for calls, text messages, data, and emergency functionality, essentially making them unusable."
The spark that lit the match for this downfall happened 15 years ago this week. The late Steve Jobs stepped on stage and revealed a small piece of technology that would revolutionize the world. Instead of adapting, Blackberry watched the iPhone and Apple dominate for years to come.
Blackberry will go down as one of the most read technology case studies in history. They were a company that went from controlling half of the world's smartphone market, to less than 1% all within five years. They made a few attempts to try and gain traction back in the smartphone market, but all of their attempts failed. They switched their focus to cybersecurity software rather then developing hardware. To show how terribly the Blackberry fell, this week Apple became a $3 Trillion dollar company. Today, Blackberry phones cease to exist.
Before the iPhone, having a Blackberry was the epitome of cool. It was the business mans phone, and gave you ultimate swagger. It also had one of the best games in the history of phones (sorry Angry Birds), with Brick Breaker.
And as I said in the title, this is one of the worst blown leads in the history of blowing leads. In 2016, the historic and dynamic Golden State Warriors held a 3-1 lead in the finals. Kyrie Irving and LeBron James both scored 41 points in Game 5 to stay alive on the road. They did the unthinkable and took down the Warriors in Game 7. This was Cleveland's first franchise title and made them first team in NBA Finals history to come back from a 3–1 deficit. It was also JR Smith's first NBA title. Coincidence?