BlackBerry was a victim of their own arrogance. one of the quotes from the higher ups at Research in Motion was 'no one is going to want a computer for a phone!'. BlackBerry's highest strong point was email. being a business device that is more feature phone than smartphone. the OS is pretty much Java Mobile. BlackBerry might have made sense back in the mid-1990s when email was the only extra folks used on a business-oriented phone.
When society changed and the primary demographic of cellular phones went from the business elite to teens and Tracfone users, BlackBerry refused to sell to them, hoping that their business-oriented target was going to keep them alive.
Then came the iPhone, and the above quote. the only holdouts for BlackBerry were the type who'd never picture themselves with a touchscreen or weild a stylus.
Today BlackBerry is seen as a dinosaur. their app store is bone dry. unlike Microsoft's Windows Phone, they weren't late to the game, they weren't even in the game to begin with! they remained non-progressive and stale. their phones hardly changed much. there were no apps. email was no longer a prime selling point to people looking for a new phone. businesses started dumping BlackBerry for Android and Apple.
Even today, what is left of RIM is still stale. they still have a locked down OS with hardly any apps. Google no longer allows the BlackBerry versions of their apps (gmail, Voice, Maps) to even connect to their servers. in fact, Google has tried hard to pretend BlackBerry doesn't exist. the BB 10 OS is not selling and it has extremely limited app support for Android (the Android Player only supports a mere handful of apps). the Q10 looks like a slightly modified BlackBerry Curve. the aisles are empty. "But they'll die!" "sir, they're dead already!"
