BlackBerry is a line of smartphone devices developed and designed by Research In Motion (RIM). The first BlackBerry smarphone was released in 1999 and the latest version, BlackBerry 10, was released to developers in the Spring of 2012.
BlackBerry smartphones are designed to function as personal digital assistants, portable media players, internet browsers, gaming devices, cameras 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, the most popular being their proprietary BlackBerry Messenger service.
In the spring of 2011, RIM released the BlackBerry Playbook, a 7-inch tablet computer to compete with Apple's popular iPad device but it has been slow to catch on with consumers. In June 2012, RIM announced it would cease production of the 16 GB Blackberry Playbook tablet.
