Just how hard would it be for BlackBerry to duplicate the important parts of the AppStore? How about do that and lose the the obnoxious part, like setting up a standardized framework that's easy for developers to opt-in to, and not required?
The real coup with the the iPhone is Apple's handling of the user's experience in the iPhone App store.
BB certainly has the least retarded relationship with US carriers (especially now that they're so big), but their old-world mindset of small crappy web portals reflects more on their history with the carriers and their tendency to "eat their seed corn" and over-monetize channels (pay to get your app listed and pay to download it? no thanks)
Otherwise BB has the iPhone beat for indie developers -- the SDK is free to download and use, and you can transfer apps straight from your website to a telephone. BB doesn't force themselves into the center of your transactions, which means as a developer you're free to do things like charge per month or per message, or distribute your app for free and allow people to buy it inside the application itself.
Probably not very hard, but if they had done it, they would have all the hype now wouldn't they? RIM has been in the business for years, so why didn't they start an App Store this well marketed a long time ago?
This is a simple case of a start-up (Apple) changing the way business is done and capturing a share of the market from older companies who were to entrenched in the old way of doing things. RIM can still catch up, and like you mentioned, maybe even surpass Apple by getting rid of obnoxious parts, they just need to get their act together.
