Might be wrong, tell me if i am, but Blackberry, especially here in Ireland, was expensive because of the extra plan to get it to work with mail. I remember spending weeks trying to get my Exchange server at home to talk to Blackberry mail... Gave up and took me 5 min to get it working on Windows Phone with Exchange Active Sync, and later with the iPhone. And for Blackberry, i had to spend extra per month for it to get it enabled. I ended up canceling that part and staying with standard data and all went well on iPhone and Windows Phone.

BB10 (QNX based) phones didn't need a special plan.

yea, i was using them before that...

> There just wasn't room for a third player

It took something like four years until Apple and Android passed Nokia's market share. They had their chance to fight.

Yeah no one would make apps for 3rd place, Android already has the problem of being the 2nd target for many new apps. It's worth it for services but a lot of times the Apple app is better because users pay more.

You're looking at everything through the present lense.

Android wasn't in full swing back then. Linux + Qt could have been built up into an amazing mobile OS. I'd argue Android could have ended up as the 3rd place OS.

Nokia just needed to switch to being the premier Linux + Qt phone maker instead of the only one + trying to lock everything up on top of Linux + Qt.

The third player would have been Linux + Qt.

Much easier sell than random new OS.