> "How can things be so bad?" It's not so simple. Blackberries expanded aggressively into developing markets, as well as low-end markets in developed countrie

> "How can things be so bad?" It's not so simple. Blackberries expanded aggressively into developing markets, as well as low-end markets in developed countries, by offering lower rate plans compared to traditional smartphones. This created a temporary lull where the gigantic market share losses being taken in North America and Europe were being absorbed by sales increases in developing markets - lower-margin sales, mind you, on products targeted at the lowest end of the segment as opposed to BB's upmarket positioning during its heyday. So, to recap: high-margin, high-end sales being completely decimated everywhere, but countered by expansion into low-margin, low-end markets at high-volume. And now, of course, the low-margin, low-end markets are being eaten alive by Android. So BlackBerry's time is truly up. This is reflected now in RIM's publicly available finances - the fiscal reality simply lagged behind market sentiment by a couple of years, that's all. I will make a wager: in 3 years you should go back to South America and Australia - I'm willing to bet that RIM's market share in those countries will resemble Blackberry's market share in North America today.