I suspect if Apple and NeXT never "merged", the phone market would be RIM vs (a very different) Android, but we'd be worse off.
Blackberries were OK at the time, but my god RIM was so culturally conservative and Google at the time had no design sense that we'd probably be 10 years behind where we are now - and if we even had software keyboards they'd be terrible.
They probably would still be the #1 phone manufacturer, still making terrible Symbian phones with terrible developer support. I was working for Nokia (and a shareholder) on their future phones c. 2004-2005 and it was horrible all the way down. Apple deserved to eat everyone's lunch.
Blackberries were OK at the time, but my god RIM was so culturally conservative and Google at the time had no design sense that we'd probably be 10 years behind where we are now - and if we even had software keyboards they'd be terrible.