But the Visual Workstation line's failure was merely one gut punch in a succession of gut punches that destroyed SGI. SGI had two core competencies: graphics workstations and HPC. The availability of cheap (comparatively) multi-processor x86 workstations running ports of formerly IRIX-only software killed their workstation lines, and the combination of Itanium being late, Itanium trailing way behind x86 in $/FLOPS and watts/FLOP, and x86 clusters with fast Myrinet (later 10GigE and Infiniband) interconnects becoming in vogue killed most (not all, but enough) of SGI's HPC market share.
(I type this all with a bit of sadness: part of my first job out of college was running and porting software to a 20 CPU, 20 GB RAM SGI Power Challenge 10000, and I still have a soft spot for exotic big iron.)
My main gripe as a dev. regarding BB is the same as for Bada (Tizen ancestor): no SDK on linux (which also means BSD). It's a minor point though.
Nah, the real problem with BB is its image outside its user base. I bet most people associate BB with tiny devices with tiny keyboard, while people think of Apple and Android stuff as cool, fashionable. Their latest product sports touch screens and perhaps more, but it will take time for the public to pick it up.