BlackBerry Reaches 50 Million Sales: RIM's 2009 Smartphone Milestone

On April 2, 2009, Research In Motion published its fourth-quarter and full-year earnings for fiscal 2009, and buried inside the usual run of revenue and subscriber numbers was a milestone the company was clearly proud of: BlackBerry had reached 50 million devices sold since the platform launched. It's worth being precise from the outset — 50 million was a cumulative, lifetime total, not sales for a single year, not a subscriber count, and not a market-share figure. Those are three separate numbers, reported separately, and this article keeps them that way throughout.

What RIM Announced in April 2009

RIM's release, titled "Research In Motion Reports Fourth Quarter and Year-End Results for Fiscal 2009," covered the three months and full fiscal year ended February 28, 2009. Co-CEO Jim Balsillie's quote inside it framed the milestone directly: RIM had experienced "an extraordinary year in fiscal 2009," reaching its 50 millionth BlackBerry smartphone while generating $11 billion in annual revenue. The 50-million figure wasn't the headline financial metric that day — it was more of a proud aside inside a broader earnings report — but it's the detail that ended up getting repeated most widely in tech coverage afterward.

A Cumulative Total, Not an Annual Figure

Fifty million was the running total of every BlackBerry sold since RIM entered the smartphone market, accumulated across multiple years and product generations — not units sold during fiscal 2009 alone. RIM's own reported shipment figure for all of fiscal 2009 was approximately 26 million devices, with about 7.8 million of those in the fourth quarter. Fifty million was the finish line of a multi-year climb, and treating it as a single year's number would overstate RIM's fiscal 2009 output by roughly half.

What Mobility Today Published About the Milestone

Mobility Today did cover this story, running a piece headlined "RIM sells 50 millionth BlackBerry and announces sales figures," bylined to Geoffrey Farinha and posted Saturday, April 4, 2009 — two days after RIM's official release. In the interest of accuracy, it's worth being direct about what that original piece actually was: rather than independent commentary, it republished RIM's earnings release close to verbatim, including the full financial breakdown, crediting RIM as the source. There's no meaningful original editorial framing to draw from beyond the headline itself and the choice of which release to run. This article is instead built on independently verified April 2009 coverage of the same announcement, including RIM's own release language and contemporary reporting from outlets like Engadget.

Sold or Shipped? A Real Distinction

Here's a detail worth preserving: Mobility Today's headline used the word "sells," but Balsillie's actual quote described RIM as "shipping our 50 millionth BlackBerry smartphone" — shipped, not sold. Shipment figures reflect what a manufacturer sends to carriers and retailers, while sell-through reflects what actually reaches customers; the two aren't always identical, though at this scale they were likely close. Most contemporary coverage, including Engadget's, echoed the "sold" framing in its own words, but RIM's own official language was "shipped" — a distinction worth keeping in any accurate retelling.

RIM's Fourth-Quarter and Fiscal 2009 Results

The milestone landed inside a genuinely strong earnings report. Fourth-quarter revenue was $3.46 billion, up 24.5% from $2.78 billion the prior quarter and up 84% year-over-year from $1.88 billion. Devices made up roughly 83% of that quarterly revenue, service about 12%, software about 2%. Full fiscal year revenue reached $11.07 billion, up 84% from $6.01 billion the prior year. Net income for the quarter was $518.3 million ($0.90 per diluted share), and full-year net income was $1.89 billion ($3.30 per diluted share), up 46.3% over fiscal 2008. RIM closed the quarter with $2.24 billion in cash and investments, and guided the following quarter toward $3.3 to $3.5 billion in revenue.

Subscribers: A Separate Number Entirely

Distinct from the 50-million cumulative sales figure, RIM also reported its active subscriber base in the same release: approximately 3.9 million net new subscriber accounts were added in the fourth quarter, bringing the total to approximately 25 million as of February 28, 2009. That figure represents active accounts at a single point in time, naturally smaller than a lifetime count of devices sold to everyone who'd ever bought one, including earlier adopters who'd since upgraded or moved on. Conflating the two would misstate either number.

Where BlackBerry Stood in the Smartphone Market

As a third, separate figure, RIM's approximate share of the global smartphone market in 2009 hovered in the high-teens to low-20s percent range across the year, per Gartner's tracking — around 20% in the first quarter, near 21% by the third, and about 19.9% for the full year. That placed RIM a clear second behind Nokia's Symbian platform, and ahead of Apple and, at this early stage, Android. This market-share figure describes RIM's slice of smartphones sold in a given period — a fundamentally different measurement from either the cumulative-sales total or the subscriber count above.

From Executive Tool to Mainstream Device

BlackBerry's earliest reputation was built around business use — handed out by IT departments to executives who needed reliable email away from their desks, long before "smartphone" was a mainstream category. Reaching 50 million cumulative devices sold reflected a real shift beyond that original audience: RIM had spent the preceding years pushing into more consumer-oriented hardware, cheaper pricing, and broader carrier availability, while still protecting the enterprise-grade security that built its reputation in the first place. The milestone was as much a story about market expansion as raw volume.

The Devices Behind the Milestone

RIM never broke down the 50-million total by model, and this article won't invent an attribution that doesn't exist in the record. What's clearer is simple market tenure — some models had been available far longer than others by April 2009.

Because the Pearl and Curve had simply been on shelves longest by early 2009, it's reasonable to assume they carried a disproportionate share of cumulative sales relative to the still-new Storm, but that's an inference from tenure, not a number RIM confirmed. The Storm launched on Verizon only in late November 2008 — a little over four months before the milestone — so crediting it as a major driver of that specific figure would be reading into RIM's numbers what RIM never said.

Push Email and BlackBerry's Core Pitch

Underneath the hardware changes, BlackBerry's core value proposition stayed remarkably consistent: reliable push email, delivered without having to manually check for it. That's unremarkable now, but in the mid-to-late 2000s it was a real differentiator, and it's the feature most closely tied to why BlackBerry became a fixture in corporate and government environments. Nearly everything else RIM built — the keyboard, the server infrastructure, the messaging app — existed largely to make that core email experience faster and more reliable than the competition.

BlackBerry Messenger

BlackBerry Messenger, or BBM, launched in August 2005 as a free instant-messaging service exclusive to BlackBerry devices, identifying contacts by device-specific PIN rather than phone number. By 2009 it had become a genuinely significant part of BlackBerry's consumer appeal, especially among younger users, offering fast, essentially free messaging when SMS still commonly cost money per message on many plans. BBM's exclusivity also created a network effect — a BlackBerry became more attractive the more people in your circle already had one — that helped pull the platform beyond its original business audience.

BlackBerry Enterprise Server

BlackBerry Enterprise Server, or BES, was the infrastructure that let IT departments centrally manage and secure fleets of BlackBerry devices — email sync, security policies, remote wipe, and integration with systems like Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Notes. BES is a major reason large organizations trusted BlackBerry with sensitive communications well before comparable management tools existed for most competing platforms, and it's a big part of why RIM's device sales and enterprise reputation stayed so closely linked.

Carrier Partnerships

RIM's growth through the 2000s depended heavily on broad carrier support, and by 2009 BlackBerry devices were sold through a wide range of major carriers across North America, Europe, and other markets rather than tied to a single exclusive partner. That contrasted with the iPhone, which remained tied to exclusive single-carrier deals in most markets — in the U.S., it was still AT&T-exclusive as of April 2009. Wider carrier availability meant more shelf space, more subsidized pricing, and more paths to a sale.

Why the Physical Keyboard Still Mattered

In April 2009, a physical QWERTY keyboard was still a genuine competitive advantage for many buyers, particularly professionals composing email much of the day. Touchscreen typing was still relatively new and, for many users, less trusted than physical keys with tactile feedback — RIM's own Storm, which tried a touchscreen-first approach that same year, drew a mixed critical reception partly for how differently it handled text entry compared to the keyboard-equipped models buyers were used to. Sticking with physical keyboards across most of the lineup wasn't a legacy holdover so much as a deliberate alignment with what RIM's core audience actually valued.

The iPhone Was Already a Real Rival

By April 2009, the iPhone was not a hypothetical threat. Apple had launched the original iPhone in June 2007 and followed it with the 3G-capable iPhone 3G in July 2008, and by the time RIM announced its milestone, the iPhone had already meaningfully reshaped expectations around touchscreens and app ecosystems. RIM's own Storm was a fairly direct response to that pressure, even if its execution drew mixed reviews. RIM and Apple weren't yet fighting for the same buyers in every segment — BlackBerry still held a firm grip on enterprise users the iPhone hadn't seriously displaced — but the competitive pressure from Cupertino was already real.

Android Existed, But Barely

Android competition, by contrast, was still in its infancy and shouldn't be overstated for this specific moment. The first commercially available Android device, the HTC Dream (sold in the U.S. as the T-Mobile G1), had only gone on sale in October 2008 — roughly six months before RIM's announcement — and Android was still a niche, single-device proposition rather than the broad multi-manufacturer ecosystem it would become within a couple of years. It was a notable development by early 2009, but not yet a serious threat to RIM's position; treating 2009-era Android as a major competitive factor for BlackBerry would be projecting hindsight onto a moment where that competition simply hadn't matured yet.

A Peak-Growth Moment for RIM

Taken together, April 2009 looks like a company at genuine peak momentum: revenue and net income climbing sharply year-over-year, strong subscriber growth, a real symbolic sales milestone, and market share holding firm in a rapidly growing category. That doesn't mean RIM's position was fully secure — pressure from Apple was clearly building — but by essentially every metric the company reported that day, this was a business still very much on the way up.

What Came Next

It's worth closing with a brief, honest note on where the story eventually went, without letting it overshadow what was a genuinely strong moment in 2009. In the years that followed, RIM's position gradually eroded as Android's ecosystem expanded rapidly across manufacturers and price points and the iPhone kept growing its consumer base, while RIM struggled to modernize its aging software and app ecosystem quickly enough. That later decline is a well-documented chapter of BlackBerry's history in its own right, but it's a different story from this one — this piece is about a company at a genuine high point, not yet facing the pressures that would eventually reshape it.

FAQ

When did BlackBerry sell its 50 millionth phone?

RIM announced reaching 50 million cumulative BlackBerry devices sold on April 2, 2009, as part of its fourth-quarter and full fiscal 2009 earnings report.

How many BlackBerry phones had been sold by 2009?

Approximately 50 million, cumulatively, since the platform launched — not 50 million in a single year.

Who made BlackBerry phones?

Research In Motion, a Canadian company based in Waterloo, Ontario, later renamed BlackBerry Limited.

Why was BlackBerry so popular?

Reliable push email, a trusted physical keyboard, strong enterprise security through BlackBerry Enterprise Server, and BBM's free, fast messaging all contributed through this period.

What was BlackBerry Messenger?

A free instant-messaging service exclusive to BlackBerry devices, launched in August 2005, using device-specific PINs rather than phone numbers.

What was BlackBerry Enterprise Server?

Software infrastructure, generally called BES, that let organizations centrally manage and secure fleets of BlackBerry devices, including email sync, security policy, and remote wipe.

Which BlackBerry models were popular in 2009?

The Pearl and Curve had been on the market longest by that point and are generally regarded as strong general-purpose sellers, while the Bold and the newly launched Storm were the more recent additions as of April 2009.

Was BlackBerry bigger than the iPhone in 2009?

By global smartphone market share, RIM was ahead of Apple in 2009 per Gartner's tracking, though the iPhone was already a fast-growing, increasingly serious competitor.

When did BlackBerry reach its peak?

RIM's business was still growing strongly as of this April 2009 announcement; its broader decline became apparent in the years that followed as competition from Android and iPhone intensified.

Why did BlackBerry later decline?

Growing competition from Android's rapidly expanding ecosystem and the iPhone, combined with RIM's slower pace of modernizing its own software, gradually eroded BlackBerry's position — a longer story beyond the scope of this 2009 milestone.