Munich gave the world lederhosen, pretzels, and the BMW. But it also gave us the BlackBerry. And for that, your aching thumbs should probably send a silent thank you to Bavaria.
RIM knew their device—running on the Mobitex network—needed a sophisticated, dense, tech-hungry audience to beta test the "push email" concept. They chose Munich, the Stadt der Geister (City of Minds), home to Siemens, BMW, and a dense corridor of tech startups. The launch event was famously understated. Unlike the Steve Jobs-style theatrical reveals of later years, the BlackBerry 850’s debut was held in a rented conference room near the Munich Residenz. blackberry 850 introduction location munich germany
The BlackBerry 850 was the antithesis of a beer festival. It was the device that ended the weekend. It was the invention that meant you could never truly "clock out." Munich gave the world lederhosen, pretzels, and the BMW
The press release, dated August 30, 1999, is a charming fossil of the era. It touted the device as a "wireless handheld that offers easy access to corporate data." The killer feature? Two-way paging. Unlike the Steve Jobs-style theatrical reveals of later
While the world credits Waterloo, Ontario, as the home of BlackBerry, the genesis of the always-on, thumb-typing revolution didn’t happen in Canada. It happened in the heart of Bavaria, with the introduction of the . The "Interim" Device That Changed Everything By 1999, Research In Motion (RIM) had already dabbled in pagers. But the 850 was different. It wasn't a phone. It wasn't really an email machine yet. It was a wireless handheld device that looked like a bar of soap that had swallowed a tiny QWERTY keyboard.