It's interesting to note that RIM is about 1/3rd of Apple in almost every way, which makes sense given that they make only the BlackBerry, whereas Apple makes a whole lot more stuff.
Anyway, I expect both of them to keep doing pretty well for the next little while (as we all roll our eyes at the "ohmigod iphone killer, ohmigod blackberry killer" crap) with commodity handset manufacturers (Samsung, LG, Moto) increasingly having to rely on Android in order to have at least a chance of keeping up with Apple and RIM.
It seems like Apple is doing itself quite a disservice only serving AT&T (or whatever partner they've chosen in your country). RIM is able to sell to a lot more potential buyers than Apple is and Apple is losing out on customers who chose a RIM device based on carrier availability.
I'm sure AT&T and others are doing a lot to make the exclusivity worthwhile, but at some point wouldn't selling 2-3x more phones make better sense? If Apple were smart (and I'm not saying they aren't), I'd think they would want to make sure that the iPhone/iPod touch became the platform for mobile computing. They're already getting there as evidenced by the huge number of App Store applications, but they seem to be treading dangerously as other companies won't play by Apple's one-carrier handicap.
Apple doesn't want to end up where it did on the desktop - an also-ran whose "our way is the only way" saw their marketshare crumble. Granted, in this case, I'd say that Apple would be a major player also-ran, but there's no reason why they can't be #1 and build an almost Microsoft-like lead here if they sold more openly.
The fact that profits, not revenue or market share, are most important seemed to go over the heads of Apple's PC competitors for a while, too. Apple's growth prospects, profit margins, and expansion into the iPod business famously led to their market cap eclipsing Dell's several years back, after Michael Dell had recommended selling all of Apple's assets and returning the proceeds to investors as Apple's best business strategy. On Wolfram Alpha, I see Apple's market cap is now about 6 times that of Dell.
Profits normally (an economist would say always, but they often forget monopoly and rent seeking via government) move out of commodized services and into noncommodities. Hence you should expect to see such behavior.
http://www64.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=apple%2C+rim
It's interesting to note that RIM is about 1/3rd of Apple in almost every way, which makes sense given that they make only the BlackBerry, whereas Apple makes a whole lot more stuff.
Anyway, I expect both of them to keep doing pretty well for the next little while (as we all roll our eyes at the "ohmigod iphone killer, ohmigod blackberry killer" crap) with commodity handset manufacturers (Samsung, LG, Moto) increasingly having to rely on Android in order to have at least a chance of keeping up with Apple and RIM.