RIM's problem was hubris. The top brass listened to their "gut" instead of taking a sober analysis of the market. Their approach to devices in 2008 was basicall

RIM's problem was hubris. The top brass listened to their "gut" instead of taking a sober analysis of the market. Their approach to devices in 2008 was basically the same as in 2001. They assumed BES was an unassailable moat. They also assumed carriers would never budge on data plans and I can only assume they had never heard of WiFi. What the market was saying in 2008 was it didn't actually give a shit about BES, didn't give a shit about BBM, software keyboards were fine if they didn't suck, and real browsers on phones were important. Instead of really listening to the market RIM just kept making the same devices as before. The iPhone and even early Android phones blew the doors off BlackBerries. By the time RIM decided to join the rest of the world it was too late. They were releasing devices in 2010 that couldn't compete with iPhones and Androids from 2008. The BlackBerries were up against the iPhone 4 by 2010, they were a joke in comparison. I went from a BlackBerry Pearl to the first iPhone. Even in the admittedly early state of iOS 1.0 it was vastly superior to the Pearl. It wasn't even funny how much better of a device it was. Every iPhone after that just increased that gap over whatever RIM was selling.