Because iOS and Android have no email and calendaring support whatsoever...
If Microsoft, with orders of a magnitude more cash available to burn is finding it almost impossible to break the Android-iOS duopoly, I'm thinking BB's chances of making a comeback sufficient to create a third player in the market are somewhat on the same order of a extrasolar comet flying into the solar system, slingshoting around Jupiter, hooking off Neptune, doing four orbits of the sun before being captured for three orbits by Saturn, being flung at Earth, breaking up under the Moon's gravitational pull and a one inch piece flying to earth severing John Chen's left testicle as he takes a leak.
BlackBerry is the Windows Phone of phones!
???
Our staff's Android and iOS devices all hook into Exchange and can use its address book, all via SSL connections. Maybe BB is a bit more feature rich, but having to run BES as an integrator between BB devices and an Exchange server is a resource-hungry pain in the ass. ActiveSync does the job well enough.
They're thinking "Hmmm, do we hand this mountain of cash we're still sitting on back to the shareholders and close up shop, or do we spend that cash frivolously on doomed loss leaders schemes and executive salaries?"
I think you can probably guess at the answer. But really, anyone still holding BB stock at this point is staking more of a religious position than a business one. Anyone with any interest in meaningfully profitable investment strategies dumped BB a long time ago.
The next stage, I'm presuming, is for BlackBerry to turn into SCO and start trying to extort license fees from Android manufacturers and Apple.
They have virtually no sales, but a huge amount of cash from their halcyon days. Rather than simply hand that money back to investors and close shop, they've decided that a "flush it all down the toilet" strategy is in order.
I get that they're trying to do the loss leader game, but if this is successful, BB will be out of pocket a heap load of cash with little immediate benefit. If it isn't successful, then the stunt demonstrates they're fate is to be a bit player with a niche in keyboard smartphones, and no hopes of ever taking on Android and iOS devices.
Living on Earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip around the Sun.