But as the market has grown, the Blackberry's market share has dropped from 45 percent to 40 percent while the iPhone took 17.5 percent in the second half of 2007. The iPhone's "consumerization" of the smartphone market has forced RIM out of its enterprise comfort zone and into the unchartered waters of consumer marketing.

Competing Against Apple

RIM's efforts in the consumer space have largely fallen flat, said Greg Sterling, principal analyst with Sterling Market Research, in a telephone interview. "All their marketing stuff falls flat. It's not persuasive, it feels forced," he said

Competing with Apple for consumers' wallets is a challenge. To pull it off, RIM needs to lure third-party developers, Sterling said. "If the Blackberry is able to get enough cool stuff on the device to make applications compelling to enough people, it's a hedge on iPhone's move into enterprise," he added.

Apple's appeal to third-party developers could easily overwhelm RIM. Apple has said it will launch a new version of the iPhone software to enable third-party applications on the iPhone and the iPod touch. Apple says more than 200,000 developers are working on applications for the iPhone.

Pressure From Android

Meanwhile, Apple will roll out Outlook and Exchange integration on the iPhone, which may give it a boost in the enterprise, putting additional pressure on RIM. "Blackberry's smartphone share will continue to erode if the enterprise responds to Outlook and Exchange on the iPhone," Sterling said.

Besides the iPhone, RIM is feeling pressure from Google's Android initiative for Internet phones. Several models are expected to be released at the end of this year and early 2009. And Nokia, which has so far failed to crack the U.S. market for smartphones, plans another attack.

Ultimately, all the talk of "Crackberry" and addiction is unlikely to help RIM. "Crackberry is all about the novelty or perhaps oppressiveness of being connected to work all the time," Sterling said. "The experience of browsing the Internet on the Blackberry is a poor experience." By contrast, iPhone users largely browse the Web for fun, although that could change as the enterprise adopts it.

"Blackberry's kind of the Microsoft of smartphones -- it's got the market share but it doesn't have a sexy quality. The iPhone has the emotion and buzz," Sterling said.

To compete, RIM is working on a so-called "Apple killer" -- a device with a touchscreen and lines suggestive of the iPhone. But AT&T is said to have delayed its introduction of the new phone because of problems with call quality -- and delays hurt RIM as a new 3G iPhone is rumored for release this year.