Its less to do with lack of popularity and more to do with uselessness. In most countries wifi is easily and readily accessible for hundreds of locations, the use of 3G is for emergencies more than anything else. People have no need for unlimited bis packages, the most common bis packages are between 100mb and 500mb as with wifi all over the place its not needed, not to mention the 70% longer lasting battery caused by not using BIS.
BIS lost popularity in most first world countries as it became nothing more than a forced package, people don't want to have to pay for a service to use their phones when they have far better options that don't require a paid service just to make use of your handset. Why pay for BIS when wifi is free and anything from 10x - 100x faster plus you can use a better quality, far more powerful, customizable and more attractive phone.
RIM used to be an almost exclusive corporate and government phone owing to its security, it was posted i think Saturday that US government agencies are starting to replace Blackberries with iphones and android,t he primary reason being its actually cheaper and affords them more control over the security without high licensing fees.
RIM no longer has the boast that they have the most secure devices, if you consider that when iphones first came out they were the least secure handsets on the planet, banking institutions actually forbid their staff from owning them as they posed a security risk to the bank and its clients, now thanks to updates and security improvements, they are actually suitable for government use and declared safe for transferring sensitive and top secret information.
Was a few weeks ago also on MyBB that it was confirmed that the CIA was allowing staff to use Android devices so RIM is feeling the hurt.
