Fifty Million BlackBerrys Shipped

RIM has celebrated shipping its fifty millionth BlackBerry, ten years after launching the device.

It was January 1999 when Research In Motion launched the very first BlackBerry. Now, almost a decade to the day since that event, the company is celebrating having shipped its 50 millionth BlackBerry.

The company, which now has 12,000 employees, has the BlackBerry available in 150 countries, from 425 separate carriers, and carries a staggering three petabytes of traffic every month from some 21 million subscribers.

Sometimes dubbed the Crackberry because of the way people become addicted to using it, it’s a favorite of President Obama, who has a special, secure model. Although initially aimed at business, it’s made great inroads into the consumer market with the BlackBerry Storm – Verizon alone has sold one million of those handsets. But the challengers, such as the iPhone and Google Android smartphones, are already out there, and more are on the horizon.