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NewslettersCEO Daily

‘I get more meetings because of the brand’: BlackBerry’s CEO on keeping a famous name

Diane Brady
By
Diane Brady
Diane Brady
Executive Editorial Director
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Diane Brady
By
Diane Brady
Diane Brady
Executive Editorial Director
Down Arrow Button Icon
October 29, 2026, 5:59 AM ET
A smartphone displays the logo of BlackBerry Limited (NYSE: BB).
A smartphone displays the logo of BlackBerry Limited (NYSE: BB).Cheng Xin/Getty Images
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  • In today’s CEO Daily: BlackBerry CEO John Giamatteo on having a corporate name that stands out.
  • The big leadership story: Tech earnings galore.
  • The markets: U.S. futures fall on disappointing hyperscaler results.
  • Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.

Good morning. Interbrand came out with its 2026 Best Global Brands list yesterday. Apple occupies the top spot. It first hit No. 1 in 2013, the year smartphone pioneer BlackBerry fell off the list. I wrote a lot of stories about BlackBerry over the years, from its stunning rise to its precipitous fall. There have been books, case studies, even a “comedy” about co-founders Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis that you can now stream on Netflix. And there’s also a serious company that continues to proudly boast the name BlackBerry, even though it no longer makes BlackBerry handsets and went by the name Research In Motion when it did.

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So when I met with BlackBerry CEO John Giamatteo recently, the first question I asked was why he stays attached to such a notorious name. After all, the company now makes its money—more than $600 million and growing this year, compared with close to $20 billion at its height—from a business called BlackBerry Secure Communications and the very popular QNX software that powers more than 275 million smart vehicles and is expanding into robotaxis, medical devices, and robots.

The main reason is that having a recognized brand makes the company stand out in the crowd. “I get more meetings because of the brand,” he told me. “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 cost? “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.’”

That said, a little attention can go a long way. “Being a public company, you have to have a proctology exam every quarterly result,” says Giamatteo, who joined the company as president in 2021, becoming CEO in 2023. “But I net out that it’s probably better to be public.”

To him, the BlackBerry brand is less a cautionary tale about missing market shifts than a testament to resilience and reinvention. Balsillie and Lazaridis also deserve credit for having the foresight to buy QNX software for $200 million back in 2010. Says Giamatteo: “BlackBerry will endure.” Certainly, it’s got a sticky name.

Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com

Top leadership news

Alphabet shares fall despite Google Cloud revenue doubling

Alphabet shares dropped more than 11% after hours as slower search growth and heavy AI spending overshadowed Google Cloud’s revenue, which more than doubled to $30.7 billion. Quarterly capital spending reached $51.4 billion.

Microsoft’s cloud growth beats expectations as AI spending rises

Microsoft’s Azure cloud revenue grew 48%, lifting total quarterly revenue to $92.3 billion. Shares were up more than 4% in initial after-hours trading. Capital spending rose to $45.2 billion as Microsoft continued building capacity to meet demand for AI services.

Amazon tells engineers that using more AI doesn’t mean doing better work

Amazon is warning engineers against “tokenmaxxing”—using more AI simply to boost usage numbers—and says token counts are poor measures of productivity. In updated guidelines, the company encouraged engineers to explain when AI doesn’t help their work.

The markets

S&P 500 futures are down 0.19% this morning. The last session closed up 0.28%. The STOXX Europe 600 was up 0.38% in early trading. The U.K.’s FTSE 100 was up 0.33% in early trading. Japan’s Nikkei 225 was up 1.10%. South Korea’s KOSPI was down 1.24%. China’s CSI 300 was down 1.03%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was down 0.59%. India’s NIFTY 50 was up 1.08%. Bitcoin is down at $80k.

Around the watercooler

For the first time since 1992, a Fed governor and president dissented together, as Kevin Warsh says the ‘monetary medicine’ is starting to work by Catherina Gioino

FTC and 20 states sue Dollar General, saying it overcharged its poorest customers by millions by Muskaan Arshad

Steve Jobs’ son says the GLP-1 revolution could help fight cancer: ‘Some of the most important drugs we’ve ever actually seen come to market’ by Mia Osmonbekov

In pro sports, even the superrich are being priced out of owning a team by Nick Lichtenberg

CEO Daily is curated and edited by Joseph Abrams, Jason Ma, Claire Zillman, and Lee Clifford.

This is the web version of CEO Daily, a newsletter of must-read global insights from CEOs and industry leaders. Sign up to get it delivered free to your inbox.
About the Author
Diane Brady
By Diane BradyExecutive Editorial Director
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Diane Brady writes about the issues and leaders impacting the global business landscape. In addition to writing Fortune’s CEO Daily newsletter, she co-hosts the Leadership Next podcast, interviews newsmakers on stage at events worldwide and oversees the Fortune CEO Initiative. She previously worked at Forbes, McKinsey, Bloomberg Businessweek, the Wall Street Journal, and Maclean's. Her book Fraternity was named one of Amazon’s best books of 2012, and she also co-wrote Connecting the Dots with former Cisco CEO John Chambers.

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