<P> While BlackBerry Limited retains control over the BlackBerry Messenger, the consumer version is also being developed and maintained by Emtek . </P> <P> RIM, founded in Waterloo, Ontario, first developed the Inter@ctive Pager 900, announced on September 18, 1996 . The Inter@ctive Pager 900 was a clamshell - type device that allowed two - way paging . After the success of the 900, the Inter@ctive Pager 800 was created for IBM, which bought US $10 million worth of them on February 4, 1998 . The next device to be released was the Inter@ctive Pager 950, on August 26, 1998 . The very first device to carry the BlackBerry name was the BlackBerry 850, an email pager, released January 19, 1999 . Although identical in appearance to the 950, the 850 was the first device to integrate email and the name Inter@ctive Pager was no longer used to brand the device . </P> <P> The first BlackBerry device, the 850, was introduced in 1999 as a two - way pager in Munich, Germany . The name BlackBerry was coined by the marketing company Lexicon Branding . The name was chosen due to the resemblance of the keyboard's buttons to that of the drupelets that compose the blackberry fruit . </P> <P> The original BlackBerry devices, the RIM 850 and 857, used the DataTAC network . In 2002, the more commonly known convergent smartphone BlackBerry was released, which supports push email, mobile telephone, text messaging, Internet faxing, Web browsing and other wireless information services . </P>

When did the first blackberry phone come out