RIM renames itself to BlackBerry

The first big announcement from the big event in New York tonight is not a phone, the OS or anything to do with apps. Research In Motion has just announced that it has changed its name to BlackBerry, a name which will be used in official business as well.

The name change signifies that the new BlackBerry is putting all its might behind its new OS and the BlackBerry platform itself. It's also symbolic of dropping a lot of baggage that the company has carried to get to this point. A change in name normally doesn’t mean much, but this one signals a change in perception also. No longer will BlackBerry be on the sidelines. It’s all up front now.

RIM is now BlackBerry

The company started out in 1984 with the name we have known it by till a few hours ago. Research In Motion was founded by ex-CEO Mike Lazaridis and was in the paging and wireless e-mail network business. In 1998 they released the Inter@ctive pager 950, which competed against SkyTel, a Motorola device. The first BlackBerry device was in fact a two-way pager, released in 1995 in Munich. The name BlackBerry was coined by Lexicon Branding and chosen because of the way the keyboard's buttons resembled the drupelets inside the fruit. The first BlackBerry phone wasn’t released until 2003. 

In addition to the new branding, the company also changed its stock symbols to reflect the new moniker. From now it will be BBRY for NASDAQ and BB for TSX. Besides the new branding, BlackBerry also announced two new devices, the Z10 and Q10. The flagship is the Z10 which has a 4.2 720p screen and a dual-core processor. The Q10 has a unique cover that BlackBerry calls a ‘glass weave cover’ and a trademark physical QWERTY keyboard. Of course, the brand new OS with all its homegrown features got the bigger showing off.

All in all, it has been a day of changes for BlackBerry. The new name is a great choice according to us.

Stay tuned to live coverage from the event with our live blog.