He is correct. Blackberry was the leader of the smartphone and the keyboard was his best loved feature.
Sure there were other smartphone, Apple wasn't the first, etc
But thinking that people would just go 180 was just extraordinary. Apparently people were ready to sacrifice quite a lot for the huge screen of the iPhone.
Leader where? Blackberry was never the marketleader world-wide. That was Nokia, and OS-wise it was Symbian until ~2010 when iOS and Android took off. Nokia was never very popular in US though.
> and the keyboard was his best loved feature.
Sure.
Because on screen keyboards were still using resistive touchscreen with pens. Which is a terrible user experience. Apple used capacitive touchscreen instead, and even though the resolution was low, it worked.
Nokia didn't invest enough in Maemo, and didn't want to adopt Android either. When they finally did go with Maemo, Elop came with plan A. Look at the user experience of Sailfish. That could've easily been Nokia in ~2014...
Sure there were other smartphone, Apple wasn't the first, etc But thinking that people would just go 180 was just extraordinary. Apparently people were ready to sacrifice quite a lot for the huge screen of the iPhone.