BlackBerry "Doomed"?

The people making these claims are typically developers, American, or both.

If you were Canadian, and in particular, a Canadian consumer, this would seem like no big deal to you. It's about having the patience to wait for things, because quite frankly you have no choice. Even though you're tantalizingly close to a place where you don't have to wait for things, and at least one or two cities that never sleep.

Want Google Voice in Canada? Can't have it. Yet.

If you wanted an iPhone in Canada... you had to wait. Until you could get it.

The Kindle? There's no carrier deal in place yet. Ergo, no Kindle for Canada. Yet.

BlackBerry users (not just in Canada, but globally) are pretty loyal. So - there are only 5,000 apps for the BlackBerry. And 85,000 for the iPhone. Maybe next year there will be only 7,254 apps for the BlackBerry and 41,000,000 apps for the iPhone. For me personally, as a user, this won't make much of a dent in my thinking. I figure that BlackBerry will improve that aspect of their business, while maintaining their solid understanding of the needs of the corporate user. I figure that sooner or later, the apps I really need, made by companies like Google, Yahoo, Yelp, and the PGA Tour, will become available. As a consumer -- whatever the frustrations may currently be for the developer community -- it's not enough of a catastrophic issue for me to switch devices.

Sure, not all the apps for the BlackBerry will live up to the coolest iPhone apps. They won't vibrate, shake, and blink in quite as satisfying a fashion. But there's a solution to that, too: my wife has an iPhone.