For years, the company has released dated hardware designs with last-gen specs, but more importantly, the Blackberry software experience hasn't kept up with the competition from Apple and Google. Blackberry phones suffer from a lack of apps and a general feeling of sluggishness that you just don't find in other modern smartphone platforms -- a point that seems to everyone but RIM.

The numbers tell the story.

Having and rise quarter after quarter in the past, RIM's latest earnings left a sour taste in investors' mouths. The company missed analyst revenue forecasts, which had already been lowered earlier in the year, and lowered its outlook for the second fiscal quarter of 2011.

To cut costs, RIM will lay off an undisclosed number of employees. Shares fell sharply.

It's hard to say which company, Apple or Google, played a bigger role in RIM's misfortunes. Both the iOS and Android mobile operating systems have ascended to , and yet their possible reasons for gobbling RIM's market share are slightly different.