I've known a few people who moved from a BB to an Android, returned it, then went with an iPhone.
While I love love love my Android phone, it's definitely a geek's phone that offers a much more capable mobile platform, but at the tradeoff of more exposed complexity. And most of the additional capability are things that most people don't care about (yay! I can add more home screens, and I have a tricorder app! and I've hacked my phone to run emacs!) vs. having access to more and higher quality consumer oriented apps.
I know that the BB platform is also complex, but most people just use it as a phone with a nice email client and one or two very basic (and very common) apps -- like facebook. That's really all they want.
When they buy a phone and it's loaded with crap, and they don't know how to get rid of it (or they can't for some idiotic reason that only the carrier could ever explain), they get turned off. When they go to the Apple store they can get a phone with just the main stuff they were looking for on the screen, and it's relatively easy to get their facebook app or whatever and be done with the entire experience.
ADDED. In other words, let us not fall into the trap of rationalizing Android's lack of universal appeal by saying that the person who prefers iPhone is not geeky enough to appreciate Android.
I agree, but I do find it interesting how well the iOS devices have caught on with the geek/nerd crowd...people who are usually comfortable with having to go to great lengths to get just that one extra bit out of their personal technology.
While I love love love my Android phone, it's definitely a geek's phone that offers a much more capable mobile platform, but at the tradeoff of more exposed complexity. And most of the additional capability are things that most people don't care about (yay! I can add more home screens, and I have a tricorder app! and I've hacked my phone to run emacs!) vs. having access to more and higher quality consumer oriented apps.
I know that the BB platform is also complex, but most people just use it as a phone with a nice email client and one or two very basic (and very common) apps -- like facebook. That's really all they want.
When they buy a phone and it's loaded with crap, and they don't know how to get rid of it (or they can't for some idiotic reason that only the carrier could ever explain), they get turned off. When they go to the Apple store they can get a phone with just the main stuff they were looking for on the screen, and it's relatively easy to get their facebook app or whatever and be done with the entire experience.