There was a “ultra private” messaging app that was actually created by a US state agency to catch the shady people who would desire to use an app promising absolute privacy. Operation “Trojan Shield”.
The FBI created a company called ANOM and sold a “de-Googled ultra private smartphone” and a messaging app that “encrypts everything” when actually the device and the app logged the absolute shit out of the users, catching all sorts of criminal activity.
I have no proof, but I do have a small list of companies I actually suspect of pulling a similar stunt… perhaps not necessarily attached to the FBI or any other agency, but something about their marketing and business model screams “fishing for people who have something to hide”
I’d say their software limitations are the reason they failed, not the keyboard. In fact, people really liked the final BlackBerry devices with Android and a keyboard, but at that point the company was already gone.
But while iPhones were at the boom of Fruit Ninja, Angry Birds, iBeer and using Skype, and Google’s Android looked like ass but already had ad-infested versions of the same titles, BlackBerry had… corporate messaging? A really robust email app, I guess?