BlackBerry CEO John Giamatteo has defended the company’s decision to retain its famous name, saying the brand helps him secure meetings even as the business has moved far beyond the mobile handsets that made it famous.
BlackBerry no longer manufactures phones. Its operations now centre on BlackBerry Secure Communications and QNX, software used in more than 275 million smart vehicles and being expanded into robotaxis, medical devices and robots.
Giamatteo said the company’s recognisable identity allowed him to stand out in a crowded market. “I get more meetings because of the brand,” he said. “If I’m just ‘John from QNX,’ it’s like, ‘QNX what?’ I love the fact that it gets you in the door almost across the board.”
The trade-off is that the name can create confusion over what the business does today. Giamatteo said he spent the opening minutes of almost every conversation explaining the company’s current focus.
“I have to spend the first 10 minutes of every conversation, whether it’s an investor, whether it’s a media, whether it’s a customer, recalibrating people on who we are and what we’re doing,” he said. “But more times than not, people are like, ‘Oh, great, I like them. Glad to hear you guys are doing so well.’”
The company’s annual revenue is expected to exceed $600 million this year, compared with almost $20 billion at its peak. Giamatteo joined BlackBerry as president in 2021 and became chief executive in 2023.
He credits co-founders Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis with recognising the potential of QNX, which BlackBerry acquired for $200 million in 2010. The software business has since become a central part of the company’s reinvention.
BlackBerry’s continued public listing brings its own pressures, Giamatteo said. “Being a public company, you have to have a proctology exam every quarterly result,” he said, although he added: “But I net out that it’s probably better to be public.”
While BlackBerry disappeared from Interbrand’s list of the world’s leading brands in 2013, the name remains widely recognised. For Giamatteo, that makes it an asset rather than simply a reminder of the company’s decline.
“BlackBerry will endure,” he said.
