[bane]

I have a couple friends who refuse to give up their blackberries because of the physical keyboard. On the recent news of BB as a company going down they simply went to the local phone store and bought several "backup" blackberries in case the one they're using dies. That way they can continue to use it even if the company is dead.

My mom has a flipphone with a qwerty keyboard on it she uses for texting, and despite having an iPhone 4 sitting in a box for a year, hasn't bothered to activate it and use it since she likes her keyboard.

It's kind of mindboggling, but there really are consumers out there like that and BB as a brand is built around that idea.

The problem is that they needed to be willing to disappoint those customers in order to get into the larger market of people who don't give so much of a shit about.