I'm not 100% sure but one of the biggest differences I felt at the time when Blackberry devices were popular was that the whole ecosystem was pitched and geared

I'm not 100% sure but one of the biggest differences I felt at the time when Blackberry devices were popular was that the whole ecosystem was pitched and geared towards CTOs and CIOs making purchasing decisions versus the end users actually wanting the devices. An extension of this was the Blackberry software developer kit; it was truly the worst development platform I've worked on in decades. If just really felt like as a user of the platform and a developer RIM didn't really care about anything to make my life easier, they instead focused on checkmarks for the executives or government compliance.