> I remember for years after the iPhone came out the blackberry die-hards were insisting that they'd easily be able to make something that was "iPhone like with a blackberry keyboard"

Part of the problem is that there were not enough of them to sustain a company the size of RIM. The vast majority of the market did not care and instead valued the other side of the tradeoff, the things you can do with a touch screen but not with a physical keyboard.