BlackBerry’s Fate is Intertwined with Its Keyboard

The ailing smartphone maker announced better-than-expected results, but still faces its most important moments ahead.

BlackBerry impressed Wall Street this morning with its first earnings report to include some sales of smartphones running BlackBerry 10, the operating system that the ailing manufacturer is counting on to save it. “Impress” is a relative term. It sold a million of these devices (6 million overall) while revenues dropped 40 percent since the previous year. Still, the Canadian company, formerly known as Research in Motion, did manage to turn a profit.