Maybe this is a Canadian thing, but blackberries are still cool among teenagers. It is probably BBM although I've never used it so I don't know what advantages it confers. This is probably why RIM's death will be more characteristic of a long drawn out war than a quick battle. Even teenagers are realizing that Blackberry has very few apps. Looking at their developers site, it is clear that even RIM isn't clear on how you should develop your apps for their platform. With Android it is Java, with iOS it is Objective-C, with Blackberry it is… C/C++? HTML5? Android Java? Blackberry Java? You choose.
Where in Canada are you? I haven't seen a single Blackberry at UBC. The iPhone dominates and there's quite a few Android phones around, but virtually nothing else.
Edit: It's worth noting my buses often pick up dozens of high school kids as well, and again, I'm not seeing Blackberry. Maybe it's bigger in Toronto?
I'm in Victoria - my class (all programmers) are about evenly split between Android and Blackberry, with one or two iPhones. Before midterm die-off last year, when 1/3 of our class dropped out, there were more Blackberries. In my household, which consists of 3 Uvic varsity athletes and me, the nerd, there's a 50/50 split between Blackberry and iPhone. I'm a Blackberry user myself, and me and the others who have them are pretty darn loyal. I don't need 24/7 web access. All I need is email and the ability to text without wanting to die of irritation.
The only reason blackberry is cool among teenagers is the price point. An iPhone is just too expensive. That's also why they still very well in third world countries. The truth is that no teenager or even college student that has a blackberry wants to have one. They are forced on affordability.
From what I've seen, it's not that a BB is all they can afford; it's that all of their friends are in BBM, and they prefer using it instead of SMS, so in switching to a non BB device would make it more difficult to keep in to touch with their social circle(s). They care very deeply about this, and not nearly as much about things like screen resolution or app availability.
Of course, this may only apply to the high school/college students I see and talk to. Maybe this phenomenon is an Ottawa only thing?
I agree that BBM may keep some cliques using Blackberries, but, as we see from Comscore, the trajectory in the last two years has dropped so rapidly for Black Berry, that we can be pretty certain they won't recover in the United States.
I would love to see country by country comparisons. As an Ex-Pat Canadian, it makes me happy to believe that some countries will continue to be dedicated to RIMM.
Quite a few people here in Ottawa still have Blackberries. Mostly government types and a lot of them carry an Android/iPhone as well.
RIM signed a lot of very long term contracts with a good number of the large enterprises and various levels of government in Canada that they will stay afloat for a long time. By very long I mean you can count them in decades..
