Maybe they want to attract the huger-still number of developers who aren't flocking to iOS. It's obvious they won't get the rock star developers, but there's a lot more non-rock stars. How is the experience on Windows?
If RIM's strategy doesn't have some component that involves trying to woo iOS developers to their platform, I predict they will fail.
Finally, the whole smartphone area is ten years old, consumer-focused part of it less than five years old: less than mature, and way less than settled. In another ten years, this all might have turned out to be a silly bubble as Moore's law erases any effective differences between smartphones. Will Apple "fail" when its percentage profit per device and market share falls to current Macbook values?