Most of the people I see holding on to their Blackberries do it because either a. It's a perk from work that they get to use for free, even though they don't like it very much, or b. They're very set in their workflow and are unwilling to try something new or change their habits, even a little bit and even if it's better for them.
Before the iPhone, I used Windows Mobile Devices and Blackerries. I used a Blackberry for a long while... not because I really LIKED it, but it did email very, very well.
When the iPhone first came out, it did e-mail pretty well too. In fact it did HTML and rich-formatted e-mails way better than most Blackerries do now.
It didn't do
push e-mail though, and that's one thing the Blackberry users could beat over the heads of iPhone users. For those who absolutely needed to know they had e-mail the
second that message hit their inboxes, nothing else but a Blackberry would do.
Unfortunately for Blackberry, iOS devices are doing push e-mail now, and they're doing WITHOUT having to bolt-on an enterprise server in addition to your Exchange or (ugh) Lotus Notes infrastructure. If you have MS Exchange, or Zimbra, or anything running ActiveSync, or soon even BES, then you've got push e-mail.
BIGGEST COMPLAINT:
The iPhone has the WEAKEST NOTIFICATION system for any phone of it's cost! They should pay RIM to use theirs as I do not think Apple understands how important it is OR how it should work.
...you mean the blinking light? I don't think Apple needs to pay Blackberry to do that... they just don't want to for either aesthetic or battery life issues, or maybe both.
In any case, I for one don't miss Blackberry's "notification system." Especially since Blackberries seem to have a weaker
everything else compared to iOS.
