I agree with kjjb0204, there are many people that aren't business types, or anything like that, and they just .... want a BB! I went into Vodafone tech support and took my old 8800 when it died, and the lady said "Do you actually pay the data plan?" and I said "yeah, doesn't everyone? What's a BB without a data plan?" and she said "Wow, I sell A LOT of bb's and only about 20% of the people sign up for the data plan!" Basically, people bought the BB for being a BB without using data. (In all honesty, if I were to buy a phone WITHOUT a data connection, there are A LOT BETTER PHONES! Especially Camera phones, multimedia phones, etc.)

So now people can get a BB for being a BB and still have it "look cool." and not have to have a full qwerty and have the cool flippy thing going on!