This is not a direct answer to your question; it's more of a commentary. To wit:

The perception of RIM varies widely between the 1st world and less-developed countries.

First world consumers view BlackBerries as being antiquated. And, quite frankly, they are are correct. Compared to the functions and apps available for iOS and Android, BlackBerry has yet to show up to the party.

Meanwhile, here in Jamaica, everyone has a BlackBerry. Executives. Middle Managers. Regular Staff. Street vendors. Taxi drivers. Why?(The exceptions are mostly hipsters. Yes, we have them here too, all Mac'd out.)

The difference is 1 word: UNLIMITED

My BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS) plan costs JMD 1,500 / month. Unlimited data. And it means I have access to BlackBerry Messenger BBM, which is HUGELY popular here (I'm told in other 3rd world countries as well). BBM is basically the equivalent of unlimited texting. My bank is on BBM - I regularly send them messages while lying in bed.

If I had an iPhone / Android, I'd lose access to to BBM, plus have to buy an expensive data plan, all of which are capped. My carrier, Digicel, is testing it's 3G/4G rollout, so I'm still on EDGE. The competitor, LIME, has had 3G for some time. A 2GB plan will cost me JMD $2,000, while 4GB & 7GB plans cost 3,000 and 5,000 respectively. So cost-wise, I'd be a fool to switch to another smartphone platform.

For most people, it's not the data though: It's all about BBM. Business, relationships, current affairs, missing persons alerts all flow through BBM. Jamaica runs on BBM. A friend of mine runs his mobile phone sales/repair service directly via BBM - broadcasts are sent each day with the day's specials, you order, and he shows up. (he does use an iPad to generate an invoice and email, though :))

All my domains are hosted on Google Apps, so it'd be nice to get me a Galaxy S3 or HTC One X. But I'm not yet ready to pay so much extra for a data plan.

So that's why everyday I check on the progress of BlackBerry 10. I'm hoping it will at the very least bring RIM on par with iOS and Android. If it does that, then I'll buy one when they're released, and continue to enjoy BBM and unlimited data. If not, Android here I come. I'm raising prices anyway, so I'll be able to afford a data plan.

Interesting times are ahead. From a consumer perspective, I hope RIM succeeds - I don't want to be at the mercy of AAPL or GOOG. I hope BB10 excels and forces developers to port the best apps to BB.

Edit: clarifications.

I agree with you, the best features of Blackberry were the unlimited plan for cheap money (i remember something like 10-12euro/month here in Italy, while data plan were probably 30-40-50euro/month and in the hundreds of megabytes cap order) for small business man (BIS) and the integration and "power of control" of BES solution for big enterprises. Now I see it still used almost only in big corps, probably because of this second reason.

I could also add that BIS (at least the version i've tried in italy with TIM and Vodafone, but I think the service should be the same all over the world) is a second level service for mail: we've a vanilla IMAP/SMTP server and BIS polls only the inbox folder (you cant, afaik, see and move into other imap folders) and also save your sent email only if you create a "Sent" folder on the imap box (so it doesnt use the default one that we have on webmail and outlook). My standard Android email app handles this correctly.

It's funny, I gave my GF a Google Galaxy Nexus to use for the last week, to replace her crappy Bold 9700. Within 2 days, she switched back to her BlackBerry.

Me: "Sweety, why'd you switch back? The Android's a much better phone!" Her: "BBM. And other stuff." Me: "What do you mean?" Her: "The phone is good for games and Internet surfing, but I found it really confusing. I couldn't get to my e-mails easily. And I really wanted BBM again."

Now, it could just be her stubbornness in not attempting to learn a new UI. Android isn't necessarily worse or better, just different. However, I think if RIM can deliver games + Internet with BB10 (which they can, just look at the benchmarks and the PlayBook) alongside seamless BBM and messaging, they've got a winner.

Whether it's a winner in North America is a different story. But internationally, where BlackBerry is strong, you'll see a lot of people upgrading.

> I couldn't get to my e-mails easily

The usability of the Universal Inbox, which groups all messages and notifications, cannot be overstated. It is just so easy to glance and see all action items, and go directly from there to the app.

For those who've never used a BB, it works like this: Say someone sends you a message or friend request on FB. Sure, you'll see a notification over the FB icon, but you'll also see a message in the Universal Inbox saying "John Doe has sent you a friend request." Clicking on that message takes you directly into the FB app where you can confirm or ignore the request.

It works the same for other apps too. If there is an upgrade available for one of your apps, the message is there; clicking it takes you directly into the App World section for that app. Quite nice.

The big factor was the advent of 3g, before that RIM with there more effecient transport protocol had a real adge which also gave better battery life than anything others were doing, let alone allowing email to work and well. Since 3g phones become mature and the extra value aspects RIM have been playing catchup to a new market that allowed them to ignore there hard core market. They are now on there last shoot and it is to the moon and bust and sadly I agree, alot of the media have already given up, but what do they know.

It's not released yet, RIM's marketing is terrible and until the final product is out it would be silly to pass any form of judgment.

I hope they do well, I truely do.

Because the article showed photos of a music player, the weather, and a PDF. I can take a panoramic photo with my phone and share it to dropbox immediately. What they showed is the bare minimum, not even standard let alone a feature or newsworthy. You need to make someone go "ahh" not "Yeah they have the lowest bases covered, I guess."

No seriously, they demoed the keyboard for the article?

Yeah, it wasn't a very good demo. The RIM guy wasn't very good. He's apparently the inventor of BBM, so maybe he's a bit more like your atypical engineer.

It seems RIM is keeping all of this very close to their chest, just showing enough to show people that they're working hard on something. We just don't know what exactly.

Ultimately, it will all boil down to what the final product is. Apparently this will happen before year end, but we don't have an exact date. I agree, not having an exact date is frustrating.

I think we need to wait a bit less than 6 months before we start chanting that RIM is dead.

I think in terms of it being a good platform to develop for with a large installed base; it will still be there for a while.

That said, its management is so in a cascading spiral of incoherence, and its standing financially (it is bleeding on one side and not taking in enough revenue on the other) that its longterm viability as a stable/growing market leader is by anyones measure -- done. Their overall product line is (compared to Apple) incoherent and (compared to Android ecosystem) lacking breadth. The only player its beating in that arena is Nokia, which is like saying you could beat up a quadriplegic really well if you trained harder.

It had more Playbooks stolen last year than sold. That, while snarky, is nonetheless true.

This is a difficult spiral to get out of; almost no one ever does at this stage, so I think that's where the dismal outlook comes from. Even Apple in its darkest days had more cash on hand and options available to it than RIM does now.

The RIM blackout that occurred in October sent waves through my industry (finance) in which nearly every employee is glued to a Blackberry in and out of the office. After the blackout, I noticed a lot of long-time (10+ years) Crackberry addicts switching over to iPhones or Androids.

Because nobody has RIM devices anymore. They aren't selling devices. Developers aren't jumping on the BB10 bandwagon. Several major executive shakeups, Plummetting stock prices, and again: no developer interest.

I would agree with you about the drop in sales and in the share price, those being related of course. Also, I think everyone agrees, BBOS is old, antiquated, and dead. The executive shakeups were likely all related to this, and hopefully just a chance to clean house. I agree though, it's entirely possible they left because they don't see BB10 succeeding.

I would disagree about the lack of developer interest, especially with BB10. Most of the BlackBerry 10 Jam World Tour events are sold out, and have been sold out in a matter of days. There's are also a lot of open-source developers moving their stuff over to the PlayBook because of the ease of doing so. RIM has been pushing HTML5 on the platform, with a number of projects touting support for it (PhoneGap/Cordova, Titanium, jQuery Mobile, Sencha, just to name a few). I haven't even talked about the support for native C/C++/Python3.2, Adobe AIR, and Android apps.

Also, RIM is working hard to engage with developers. They've been very active via their @BlackBerryDev twitter account, and you can easily reach anyone on the Developers Relations team. Heck, you can e-mail Alec Saunders, VP of Dev Relations, directly yourself.

However, until the device launches, we won't really know what to make of this. We don't have hard numbers about how many developers are actually actively developing for the platform.

Let me turn it around:

What would it take to get you to buy a BlackBerry? What would it take to get you to develop for it?

Isn't it the classic innovators' dilemma? Or I guess it's the opposite...IIRC, the innovators dilemma refers to a leading company that ditches the low end in order to focus on the high end...Apple went after tht niche and did so well that it caused execs...the ones who give IT folk their jobs...to demand iPhone support even if it meant a change in infrastructure

I was probably the last BlackBerry holdout in my group of friends. I think RIM is dead because nobody I know uses a BlackBerry device or expresses any interest in acquiring one. On the rare occasion someone is "still" using a BlackBerry, they get teased for it; people ask when they're going to upgrade.

Yeah, I'll admit that the old BBOS is a piece of shit. I have my Bold 9900, I love it and use it everyday, but I definitely do want what Android/iPhone/WP7 can offer.

What do you think it would take for you to try a BlackBerry again? What about your friends?

RIM's smartphone market share is rapidly falling, they're doing mass layoffs, and they're slow to the market. The pressure from Android distribution and iPhone demand just creates a very difficult environment for RIM.

Just try using a Blackberry. That's why.

BBOS is a POS. I have a Bold 9900, love it, but only due to the hardware/form factor. The software is still shit.

But what about BB10/PlayBook? Have you used those? I think they're leaps and bounds better.

Some of our executives still have a BB; I tried a BB9900 just the time for configuring the email for an executive, i said "oh, it has touchscreen too" (and was thinking "it doesnt look so advanced, and the software seems to be the usual stuff") and the executive replied "really? i didnt notice it". Then i came back to my computer, had a quick search and found out it's priced like an iPhone or a top level Android phone (600Euro). Ouch!

Just because the corpse is warm, doesn't mean it is still alive.

LOL, fair enough. But based on what I've been seeing, they're not exactly lying down wounded, they're trying to get back up and fight.

But like I said, I may have drank too much of the Kool-Aid.

Yup . Dead man walking, er, talking.