As BlackBerry users struggle to stabilize relationships, affairs and business portfolios and as employers struggle to deal with an unanticipated spike in productivity from BlackBerry-toting workers deprived of their usual procrastination tools, rumours are surfacing that the entire affair may have been a diabolical plot to drive iPhone users to extinction.

Hospitals are reporting a surge in casualty rates as smug iPhone users, self-assured and conceited at the best of times, found their heads swelling to unprecedented proportions in the wake of RIM’s ongoing service outages.

“Half our workforce are out for the count,” said an accounts manager at a local St. John’s-based marketing company, whose workforce switched from Blackberry to iPhone earlier this year. “Our HR manager and entire IT staff spent the entire day poking fun at the janitor, who still uses a Blackberry…and then by the end of the day their heads were so big they just exploded!”

Similar reports are pouring in from across the country, as friends and families of iUsers checked their loved ones into hospital to deal with the epidemic of swollen heads.

“At this time we’re urging people to remain calm,” said a paramedic we interviewed at the Health Sciences Centre. “However strong the urge, don’t make fun of your neighbor for not having any web access on their phone all week. Don’t laugh at your kids because they’re still on RIM’s 3-year plan. Don’t whip out your iPhone on the bus and sigh loudly with smug satisfaction. It’s not worth the consequences.”

Rumours swirling on conspiracy theory websites suggest that RIM may have engineered the entire crisis, knowing how close to the edge iPhone users’ egos were.

“Well, we’ve allowed their egos to grow and grow sort of uncontrollably these last couple years,” said one RIM insider, posting under condition of anonymity. “We figured we’d let their heads swell up and bring them right to the edge, and then we pull this and…pop! Goes the iHead. No more iPhone user.”

Federal regulatory bodies are purported to be investigating to determine whether manipulation of swollen egos was a factor in the ongoing iPidemic.