The BlackBerry name

The BlackBerry is a wireless handheld device which supports push e-mail, mobile telephone, text messaging, internet faxing, web browsing and other wireless information services as well as a multi-touch interface.

BlackBerry was developed by the Canadian company Research In Motion (RIM), it delivers information over the wireless data networks of mobile phone service companies.

RIM settled on the name with Lexicon Branding Inc., one of the branding firms out of California. Lexicon was responsible for naming Apple's Powerbook as an example. One of the executives thought the buttons on the device looked like tiny seeds in a strawberry. A linguist at the firm thought "strawberry" wasn't quite the right fit. Someone else suggested blackberry and RIM went for it.

The ability to read e-mail that is received in real-time, anywhere, has made the BlackBerry devices infamously addictive, earning them the nickname "CrackBerry," a reference to the street-drug form of cocaine known as crack. Use of the term CrackBerry became so widespread that in November 2006 Webster's New World College Dictionary named "crackberry" the "New Word of the Year".

Many users also refer to BlackBerry smart phones in general simply as "berries", spawning a litany of offshoots. For example, "berry thumb" or "berry blister" is the soreness that occurs from handling the keyboard.

In Venezuela people refer to the BlackBerry as "BB" or "Bebe" (meaning "baby" in Spanish).