Looking at the last few years of pMD users, the trend is clear.
Of our current users who had BlackBerry devices, more than 92 percent switched to iOS devices, and the rest switched to Android.
The reasons why BlackBerry fell from its once-envied position will be the subject of case studies for business students for years to come. Yet it's easy to forget that we stand on the shoulders of BlackBerry. When I joined pMD as a software engineer in 2009, BlackBerry accounted for more than half of our user base. I heard firsthand from doctors and nurses how much they loved their devices, from the efficiency of their physical keyboards to their robust messaging--BlackBerry was cool. It’s easy to forget that BlackBerry was called “Crackberry,” a nickname no modern device has inherited.
Even though the fate of RIM and BlackBerry serves as a cautionary tale that nothing in technology is sacred, it is also a chance to reflect on what they made possible. In particular, here at pMD, we can reflect on how they helped make mobile charge capture and in fact mobile medicine a reality.