BBM saving RIM?

I've got a Blackberry Bold 9000 and have had it for almost 2 years. At the time I thought and still think it was on par with any high end mobile phone easy. Massive keyboard, high quality screen, chrome accents, stereo external speakers and you even got a quality hands free headset which came with a variety of ear buds AND a case!
I found the efficiency of RIM's push services a revelation, the speed you receive email, I found great, then I discovered the integration of BBM and instant messenger clients (gtalk, ms messenger, yahoo, aol) and recently the further integration with facebook and twitter. All of these are handled efficiently and without fuss.
The browser is shite, no two ways about it, I downloaded Chrome browser the first week.

Now its upgrade time and I only have one dilemma, why should I get another Blackberry?  When I originally bought the phone I only had 2 people in my BBM list, now that has grown exponentially. Having that instant access to friends, colleagues no matter were the other person is in the world 'free' of charge, has been very useful. Now 2 years on the competition is catching up to Blackberry on the enterprise side.

The new Blackberry Torch as much as I like the form factor doesn't do enough to draw first time smartphone users. To put it bluntly it has no wow factor. The new OS is nice and brings a much needed refresh but again will only really attract Blackberry users. BBM is what the average consumer and Blackberry user will see as the differentiating factor and many plain and simply cannot live without it, hence RIM using BBM as the cornerstone to their advertising campaigns.

Bottom line is what it will boil down to is can I do without BBM? I'm living quite comfortably without Facebook, so the answer is probably yes.