According to a survey done by Crowd Science, more than 40% of current Blackberry users would contemplate switching over to an iPhone for their next smartphone purchase. That’s is just 7% higher than Blackberry users who plan to switch to the Android platform on their next purchase, at 33%. That does not mean that only 25% will stick with Blackberry on their next purchase, but rather their allegiance to the brand is waning. And it’s obvious to see why.

“These results show that the restlessness of Blackberry users with their current brand hasn’t just been driven by the allure of iPhone,” said John Martin, CEO of Crowd Science. “Rather, Blackberry as a brand just isn’t garnering the loyalty seen with other mobile operating systems.”*

I find this to be an interesting reflection on the state of the Blackberry platform as viewed predominantly from a mainstream perspective. RIM has, and will most likely always have, a solid hold on the business market. Seven percent of those surveyed said they use their Blackberries exclusively for business use, 1% of users on iPhone. This is significant. The Blackberry OS has always been geared towards fast communication, and not necessarily the consumption of media the way that the iPhone has. Despite the fact that Blackberry has been around much longer than the iPhone, mobile web use erupted only when Safari was released on the iPhone, and rich media became usable on a mobile device.

The newest-generation Blackberry devices have the network speeds to achieve such rich media integration that the iPhone has. The hardware, in some cases, is faster than the latest-generation iPhone. No one would ever fault the Blackberry Bold 9700 or Storm2 for being slow phones. So, then, why don’t we have streaming video apps galore as on the iPhone? Where are our Street Fighter ports? We’ve already shown that Blackberry users want to play games.

It’s the OS, stupid! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: apps are hard to develop for the Blackberry, and when owners see the potential wealth they could have on their phones, while keeping, in some way, the same messaging functionality as their BB, they start to get itchy for change. Blackberry Messenger will never come to iPhone. But there are apps, like Ping! and WhatsApp, that perform similar, if not identical functions, and are occasionally more reliable (re: BIS outages galore in the past year).

The keyboard is basically the only thing keeping Blackberry owners glued to their devices. The only reason they can take it out of their pocket in a meet, tear off a 50-word BBM response in seconds, and slide it back in like nothing happened, barely taking their eyes off the speaker. Try doing that on your iPhone. I’ve tried. I get “asasd asdewrqaefr zvczxcsdefaSWE ZXCA,” and it’s not pretty.

But a well designed, clicky keyboard does not loyalty keep. The more people work with the iPhone platform, and not with many Android phones arriving with very-usable physical keyboards, Exchange support, push email and threaded SMS support, the Blackberry platform does not have a monopoly on the unique and addictive qualities it once used to tear all those people away from their Moto RAZRs and Nokia clamshells.

With 43% market share and growing, Blackberry is not going anywhere. And with OS6, and a webkit browser coming soon, it’s also beefing up its main weaknesses. Those updates can’t come soon enough. In the meantime, we’ll see Android and iPhone eating into its business market share, and, more importantly, into the hearts and minds of its users.

*(my emphasis)