Maybe people wouldn't diss BlackBerry so much if they were actually using its latest OS

Research In Motion launched its latest operating system, OS 6, in the fall of last year. While it's certainly nothing revolutionary when compared to Android's finest efforts and iOS 4, it's a revolution over OS 5, which by now is an entirely antiquated platform that fails to meet the demands of today's smartphone users.

So why the heck are only 18 percent of BlackBerry users running OS 6?

According to numbers released by the Waterloo technology giant, 50 percent of users are still wasting their time on the mediocre OS 5, while a staggering one in three users are still fiddling the prehistoric operating systems of 4.7, 4.6, and 4.5—with four percent of users actually on operating systems earlier than 4.5!

All new BlackBerry devices since late last year have launched equipped with OS 6. And the software update has been available to most newer models on most wireless carriers for several months now. Even factoring for enterprise users, which are always tragically slow to update their technology (corporations still running Windows XP and IE 7, for example), many users are still sitting on old operating systems. It's almost as bad as the Android fragmentation.

If a BlackBerry user isn't running OS 6, they have no right to complain about their device—and, evidently, that's a large majority of them. You can't call a product inadequate or inferior if you're not, at the very least, using the device in its prime state. It's simply unfair.

OS 6 still lacks the app frenzy that Apple and Google created for themselves, but the numbers speak to the fact that RIM's newest OS does encourage more app usage: despite being active on just one in five devices, OS 6 sees one in three of all free app downloads and more than half of all paid app downloads.

Of course, all of this better be relevant very soon. Because if RIM wants a chance in hell to recover, OS 7 needs to kick ass, and it needs to do it now.