Fair point but the 9700 is over 2 years old - and when it came out it had better battery life than the competition. The 9900 which recently came out has better specs and still a good battery life. What's killing Blackberry IMO is that it's nowhere near as good a pocket computer as iPhone or high end Android devices. The apps are much more difficult to install and upgrade as far too many reboots are required. And the difficult app development environment means there are far fewer apps.
I think consumers have spoken: "We love great pocket computers and we're willing to sacrifice voice quality, battery life, and data efficiency to get it."
The 9700 is over 2 years old, but it had a smaller (much less power draw) screen and a slower CPU even by 2 year old Android/iPhone standards. The 9900 has better specs, but still has a small screen and a single-core CPU. If they fix those limitations, the battery life will likely drop to iPhone levels.
I don't really think they can be competitive in applications without fixing the hardware, though.
I think consumers have spoken: "We love great pocket computers and we're willing to sacrifice voice quality, battery life, and data efficiency to get it."