Not only where they the only reasonable choice - they were the perfect choice - I can recall our entire executive team
living on their blackberries non-stop. Before Push-Email, unlimited SMS (and IP based alternatives, like WhatsApp), and Enterprise IM became so predominant, blackberries were the best way of staying in 24x7 contact with everyone else.
I'll even make the argument that the Blackberry might have been the better choice in 2007/2008, and, just possibly, sneaking into 2009. The iPhone lacked reasonable exchange support for it's first iteration, push email wasn't there, and the Mobile Data Management (MDM) policies and security were slim to none.
But any company that was agile, and technologically savvy, and particularly those that were focussed on consumer digital strategies, started shifting over to the popular smartphones (IOS first, Android Second) by 2011 at the very latest. Yahoo! IT's love of the blackberry has held that company back. If every one of their engineers, and executives lived on an Android/iPhone, their mobile strategy would be seeing a lot more love.
The Department of Defense might make an argument for using blackberries. Yahoo! can't.
