Research In Motion on Monday began teasing its newest smartphone today by showing a vague picture of the back of one of its new BlackBerry 10 devices on its website. There is not much to see. Looks like a rubberized back panel with maybe a power button on top and volume control on the sides. Really, it is not much to get excited about.

Or is it?

Is BlackBerry Sentiment About To Turn?

As the long-delayed BlackBerry 10 readies for its launch announcement on January 30th, sentiment may be starting to turn for the beleaguered Research In Motion. Wall Street analysts have given a yellow light to RIM’s stock rating (as opposed to the bright red light it has been facing for several years) and what we've seen of BlackBerry 10 so far do not automatically tell us that the operating system will be a dud. People might even be starting to care about BlackBerry again - and caring about BlackBerry has not been particularly popular for the last three years or so. 

For instance, the BlackBerry 10 phone teaser picture has seen a variety of press coverage, both from the popular tech blogs and even some in the mainstream media. Yes almost every new mobile device garners some press attention, but successfully adding its forthcoming BlackBerry 10 smartphones back into the conversation is a big win for BlackBerry.

One reason is that RIM has simply not released anything worth a damn since (loose approximation) the BlackBerry Bold 9000. If anything, RIM created bit of a morbid curiosity around BlackBerry 10 by going on a world developer tour to show off the “Alpha” version of its new operating system. And then there's the fact that the new line of BlackBerry smartphones has already been delayed several times before RIM finally pledged to annnounce the new phones in January. Everybody loves a good train wreck, and in the mobile industry there has been no bigger derailment then RIM's fall from grace. 

Android, Not iPhone, Killed BlackBerry

Since RIM started its rapid decline, the smartphone world has turned into a virtual duopoly between Google’s Android and Apple’s iPhone. Many point to the iPhone as the harbinger of RIM’s downfall, but BlackBerry's real killer has been Android. Nearly 75% of global smartphone shipments in the third quarter of 2012 were Android, leaving little room for its rivals.

Oddly, this may work in RIM’s favor. The BlackBerry 10's long-delayed launch may avoid the overcrowded holiday device launch season . RIM has situated the BlackBerry 10 launch to fall directly between the two biggest mobile conferences of the year - right after the Consumer Electronics Show in mid-January and right before Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February. For a moment, at least, RIM will have the stage all to itself. 

Building Anticipation

RIM’s job now is to build as much anticipation as possible. Today, we got the backside of a new BlackBerry 10 device. Next, we might get a peek at the bezel. It is a predictable form of viral marketing but, in it's really about all RIM has going right now.

So is it time to start getting excited for BlackBerry 10? Or is Research In Motion just playing the hype cycle game? Take the poll below and let us know what you think:

What are you doing on January 30, 2013? I'm guessing you're not waiting in line to get the first BlackBerry 10 smartphones.

Research In Motion revealed the launch event date on Monday. Other than that, the company offered few specifics, saying only: "The event will happen simultaneously in multiple countries around the world, where details of the smartphones and their availability will be announced."

I can't wait.

No. Literally, I can't wait.

The Mobile World Has Already Moved On

And neither can anybody else. In fact, very few people have been willing to wait for the BlackBerry 10 mobile operating system. Instead they've been busy snapping up Apple iOS and Google Android devices as fast as they can. The preternaturally patient ones hung out for Windows Phone 8, and even they don't have to wait any more.

If BlackBerry 10 had been released on January 30, 2012, it still might have been too late. But by 2013, RIM's window of opportunity seems slammed shut.

It's not that BlackBerry 10 will be worthless. Indications are that the new operating system has a number of interesting features (more on that later). It's more that it no longer matters how good it is unless it's massively better than what's already out there.

Just as good isn't good enough. Heck, even quite-a-bit-better probably isn't good enough. Don't believe me? Ask the folks who worked on Palm's webOS.

Sure, big companies deeply invested in the BlackBerry ecosystem may hang around another generation or two. But most of them are already looking for a way out. I just heard of a big company I used to work with that's replacing users' BlackBerrys with the iPhone 4. Yup, not the 5 or even the 4S, the freakin' 4. A two-generations-out-of-date iPhone was enough to keep them from waiting for BlackBerry 10.

BlackBerry Isn't Worthless, Just Doomed

All this doesn't mean that there's no value in BlackBerry 10, especially for enterprises. As ReadWrite's Dan Rowinksi pointed out in September (Showing Off BlackBerry 10, RIM Aims To Both Fit In & Stand Out), new features include

BlackBerry Hub: an always-on inbox that stores emails, texts, calendar, events and BlackBerry Messenger.

BlackBerry Balance: which customizes the user experience between personal and work interfaces.

Predictive Text: which the company hopes will revolutionize typing on mobile devices.

Active Frames: small, developer-customizable widgets that live on the device's home screen - a cross between Android Widgets and Windows Phone 8 Live Tiles.

Will all that be enough to RIM relevant again? Back in June, Research In Motion was ReadWrite's first ever DeathWatch. Nothing that's happened since has done anything to commute BlackBerry's sentence. And nothing that happens on January 30th is likely to help either. 

One more thing: Don't get me wrong, I've got nothing against BlackBerry. I was a user for years, and really liked my Curve - until those fancy iPhones and Androids made me envious. Back in April, I wrote A Requiem For RIM lauding some of the things that I loved about the BlackBerry. I still have a soft spot in my heart for the company and hope we are all wrong about its future. 

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Having fallen far behind its mobile competitors, BlackBerry maker Research In Motion desperately needs its next-generation mobile operating system to be a hit. RIM pulled back the curtain on BB 10 today at its BlackBerry Jam developers conference in San Jose, showing off features the company hopes will pull it back from the brink of oblivion.

BlackBerry 10 has been in development for 18 months and the finish line is finally in sight. For years, the knock against BlackBerry has been that it was badly outmaneuvered and its aging OS has not kept pace with smartphone innovation. These points are pretty much beyond dispute. BB 10, then, is RIM's valiant, if fraught, effort to claw its way back into the market.

A Sweeter BlackBerry

RIM CEO Thorsten Heins showed off several new aspects of BlackBerry 10 intended to drum up excitement for the platform among mobile developers, consumers and enterprises. 

The first is a unified messaging interface called BlackBerry Hub, an always-on inbox that stores emails, texts, calendar, events and BlackBerry Messenger. Users will be able access Hub on BlackBerry devices from any app or the home screen by swiping up and over from the edges of the device.

RIM is also focused on maintaining its traditional strength in the enterprise. The BlackBerry Balance feature customizes the user experience between personal and work interfaces while providing security and data protection. RIM will also unveil a new version of its app store, BlackBerry App World, that is optimized for enterprise applications. Employees using BB 10 will be able to toggle their phone between work and personal use, with work settings controlled directly by their employer's IT department.

At RIM’s BlackBerry World conference in May, Heins unveiled BB 10’s predictive text feature, which the company hopes will revolutionize typing on mobile devices. Initial reviews of BlackBerry hardware's new keyboard were tepid. At today’s keynote, Heins showed off another new user interface feature called BlackBerry Flow, a contextual touchscreen feature that knows where a finger is touching on the screen and can be integrated across all BB 10 apps.

BB 10 will also integrate a feature called “active frames” that are essentially small, developer-customizable widgets that can live on the device's home screen. Imagine a cross between Windows Phone 8 Live Tiles and Android widgets.

Heins said that BB 10 is on schedule. It will go into beta test in October through RIM's carrier partners and will be released with new devices in the first quarter of 2013.  

Making Sense Of RIM’s New Approach

Seeing the interface of BB 10 during the keynote, several things come immediately to mind. First, BB 10 looks eerily similar to Android. The active frames are small apps on the home screen, just like widgets, and the app icons could be younger brothers of Android’s primary interface. Android critics initially charged that Google's mobile OS was a copy of Apple’s iOS (which may have been true at one point, but no longer). Can RIM win by copying Android? At least the BlackBerry interface will feel familiar to many users.

BlackBerry Flow and Hub are interesting, somewhat unique, features. These are not apps, per se, but part of the platform's architecture. That means they can be integrated into just about any experience that runs on BB 10, always present, always available to be configured to a developer’s application. These persistent user experience features will give BB 10 a feeling of differentiation from Android, iOS and Windows Phone - but they may not be enough to win users back to BlackBerry’s platform. 

The goal is clear: RIM needs to turn BB 10 into a modern operating system that is close enough to the competitors that it will not alienate users while adding distinctive functions that differentiate it from Android and iOS. Once that base is in place, BlackBerry can push its strengths: communication and security. It was no coincidence that Heins’s primary messages at the BlackBerry Jam keynote were Hub and Balance. Traditional strengths integrated into an entirely new user experience should excite the BlackBerry faithful, but it might be too little, too late to turn the heads of consumers and enterprises that have long since abandoned RIM.

Sizing up BlackBerry in the Smartphone Ecosystem

To understand what companies might license BlackBerry 10, it is important to understand the dynamics of the smartphone ecosystem. Specifically, where does the operating system that runs your smartphone come from?

Apple designs its iPhone and iPad and the operating system that runs it - iOS - in-house. The devices are assembled at factories in China (you may have heard of Foxconn) and shipped to destinations across the world. Historically, this was the model RIM followed. For all intents and purposes, RIM alone designed the hardware and software and managed the manufacturing of BlackBerry devices. 

In-house design and production used to be the standard throughout the cellphone industry. Motorola, Samsung, Nokia and Palm either made or still make their own operating systems. Yet, that approach is no longer the default. Internal production takes a wealth of resources and expertise. If a company aims for the top of the market and its OS falls flat, it can be set back several years and risk its livelihood in the process. This happened to both RIM and Nokia in recent years as they fell behind the market leaders in iOS and Android. 

Google and Microsoft do not follow the internal-design-and-build model. Instead, they build the operating system (Android for Google, Windows Mobile CE and, more recently, Windows Phone for Microsoft) and license it to manufacturers that wish to build their own variations. Their approaches are not identical, however. Microsoft charges a fee for a Windows Phone license, while Google provides Android to manufacturers for free (with stipulations if Google services are used). 

This strategy explains why Android and Windows Phone devices are available from a variety of manufacturers including LG, Sony and HTC. Microsoft has employed the same strategy in the PC market for decades. 

Research In Motion cannot give away BlackBerry 10 in the way that Google does Android. That avenue would essentially lead to the end of the company. It will have to employ the same strategy that Microsoft does with Windows Phone and charge manufacturers per license. 

Possible BlackBerry Partners

There is one obvious company RIM could turn to manufacture BlackBerry 10 devices: Samsung.

The South Korean manufacturer is the perfect candidate to build BlackBerry devices. It is the world’s largest smartphone maker and does not seem to discriminate in what it builds. Essentially, Samsung will try just about anything to see if it catches fire. Its primary revenue driver is Android and its Galaxy series smartphones. But Samsung also builds devices for Microsoft’s Windows Phone (though they do not sell particularly well) and builds its own low-end operating system called Bada. Samsung is also linked to Tizen, the bastard child of the OS that was once called MeeGo. The company will likely produce a Tizen device once that platform is ready for the market. 

Samsung is such an obvious choice to build BlackBerry devices that, if for some reason it declines, RIM may be in serious trouble. Few other manufacturers are poised to take on new operating systems right now. Samsung and Apple have squeezed the smartphone and tablet market so tightly (between the two, they take up about 90% of mobile hardware revenues) that almost all other manufacturers are just trying to keep their heads above water. 

HTC is having a down year despite critical success with its Android-based One series devices. The company does not have its own operating system, and it has made Windows Phone devices in the past. As Samsung’s little sister in the smartphone ecosystem, HTC is the next logical choice, but only if the company can put together the resources for a new product launch.

The same applies to other second- and third-tier device manufacturers. Sony Ericsson has never been able to make a serious dent in the market with Android, and LG is performing much better in the waning feature-phone market than with any of its smartphones or tablets. Chinese manufacturers like ZTE and Huawei might be interested in BlackBerry 10 if the price is right. Both companies have an expanding footprint in international markets that RIM would love to reclaim. 

The problem is that all these manufacturers are doing just fine with Android. Android is free and manufacturers can do just about anything they want with it. The design of Windows Phone is inflexible in comparison and it costs manufacturers money to license. If RIM is to follow Microsoft’s Windows Phone plan, it will have trouble convincing these manufacturers to play its game.

In addition, partnering with RIM would constitute an alliance with a competitor. RIM is not like Google and Microsoft, which do not make their own devices (overlooking Google's Nexus and Microsoft's Surface). RIM will build its own BlackBerry 10 smartphones and tablets, devices that will be on store shelves next to any partner's offerings. 

Reaching Beyond Smartphone and Tablets

One area of potential growth for BlackBerry 10 is in devices that aren't smartphones and tablets. BlackBerry 10 is built using a system called QNX that the company acquired in April 2010. QNX was a platform that ran many different kinds of computers, such as those found in airplanes and cars. RIM will definitely be looking to non-traditional partners to license BlackBerry 10. 

Looking beyond the smartphone could be RIM's best bet. At the company’s BlackBerry Jam in Orlando in May, CEO Thorsten Heins showed off a car that had BlackBerry 10 integrated into almost every aspect of its computing system. RIM could also push its new operating system into other infrastructure-based industries such as healthcare and utilities (electric and water systems, for instance). 

All this boils down to one simple fact: If BlackBerry 10 fails, so does RIM. We will know by this time next year if any strategy RIM pursues pays off or if it's time to write the obituary of a once-great technology company. 

Rumors of Research In Motion possibly turning away from its BlackBerry 10 operating system and adopting Windows Phone 8 have us thinking. If RIM and Microsoft combined the might of their mobile operating systems, what would the Frankenstein-like device look like and how would it function?

There are three things to consider when thinking about a BlackBerry Windows Phone. Foremost, the features and user interface of Windows Phone would be central to the experience. Second, there would be the functionality and security of BlackBerry messaging and the proprietary network. Third, the misnomer in the equation - the fact that Nokia has developed a variety of features for its Lumia Windows Phone that Microsoft has adopted for the entire mobile platform.

So, a BlackBerry Windows Phone is not just about Microsoft and RIM. It would be a true "Frankenphone" built from the charred remains of three once-dominant players in the mobile ecosystem.

This, of course, is a speculative exercise. But if the current trends continue and RIM is forced into the hands of Microsoft, the reality of such a device is not completely far-fetched. 

What Research In Motion Offers

BlackBerry’s Strengths: Messaging, security and the potential for physical QWERTY keyboards. 

RIM’s proprietary network, which runs its secure messaging service, is still considered one of the best in the industry. Despite some costly outages in Fall 2011, the BlackBerry network has been relied upon by business users and consumers for years. Microsoft would love nothing more than to tap into the BlackBerry Enterprise Server ecosystem in enterprises where it already has a robust Windows presence.

For a Blackberry Windows Phone, Microsoft and RIM would be building strength-upon-strength with both of the companies’ enterprise services. While it may not lead to consumer success, it is imaginable that a host of CIOs managing large enterprise IT departments would jump on the chance to use two trusted brands that already have infrastructures in place at their companies. 

There are a number of things that would need to be reconciled between RIM and Microsoft, because the two companies do have overlapping products. For instance, which company controls email? Microsoft has one of the largest email infrastructures in the industry, while BlackBerry’s network offers security. An integration between the two would not seem too outrageous, though, as BlackBerry has long supported Microsoft’s Outlook email product. Microsoft would likely have to cede messaging to BlackBerry Messenger because the product is still one of RIM’s core strengths, and unless Microsoft buys RIM outright, the BlackBerry maker would likely insist that Messenger be integrated into its Windows Phones. That would be a net win for consumers that get BBM on Windows Phones, an upgrade over Microsoft’s existing chat products. 

Then there is the notion of a physical keyboard. To this point, there are few Windows Phones that have physical keyboards (the LG Quantum offers a slideout horiztonal QWERTY keyboard). Consumers like touchscreen devices, such as Apple’s iPhone and Android, but many of the BlackBerry faithful hold onto their old devices for love of the physical keyboard. For RIM, it would likely have to work both ways. In its current BlackBerry 10 plans, it looks to deploy two smartphones early in 2013, one with a keyboard and one with a touchscreen. In any partnerships with Microsoft, two BlackBerry Windows Phones would have to be created to please consumers that want a physical keyboard and/or a touchscreen.

What Microsoft Offers

Windows Phone Strengths: User experience and interface through its Hubs and Tiles, gaming integration, Windows Phone Marketplace, support services. 

One of the reasons that RIM has fallen so far behind is that its user interface on BlackBerry OS devices has been woefully lacking. When Microsoft ditched Windows Mobile CE and started building Windows Phone from its remains, the user interface was the first place it knew it could differentiate from Android and iOS. Any BlackBerry Windows Phone would need to adopt the Hubs and Tiles interface. That would be a win for BlackBerry users who have been stuck in the old-looking BlackBerry design for half a decade. 

Microsoft can also offer superior gaming to BlackBerry. As Windows Phone continues to evolve, we will likely see more Xbox integration into the platform for more dynamic mobile games. As we have seen during the past couple of years, robust application ecosystems drive sales of mobile devices. Apple had a head start with its App Store, and the “there’s an app for that” marketing campaign is partly responsible for iPhone sales. In turn, games are the largest single application category with the most potential for viral hits (see: Angry Birds, Words With Friends, etc.) The Windows Phone Marketplace is nowhere near the level of either the App Store or Google Play, but it has a special chip with the Xbox ecosystem that would benefit the BlackBerry platform.

Regardless of the numbers that RIM touts about its BlackBerry App World, the Windows Phone Marketplace is growing faster and attracting higher-end publishers. If the two companies had to make a compromise on which application store to standardize on, the Windows Phone Marketplace would have to take precedence. 

Microsoft is also known for how well it supports both its developers and enterprise customers. The ability to combine Microsoft’s enterprise support and infrastructure (such as cloud services), in addition to BlackBerry’s network, could be a powerful mix. 

What Nokia Offers

Nokia’s Strengths: Hardware design, maps and consumer services, international market.

The biggest question for a BlackBerry Windows Phone: What company builds it? Microsoft has a plethora of third-party manufacturers that would be happy to put it together, or RIM could build the device itself. 

The best answer to that question, though, has to be Nokia. Pound for pound, Nokia is the best manufacturer that Microsoft could line up for any mobile product and, considering RIM’s recent track record for devices, outclasses the Canadian smartphone maker by a mile. The logistics of Nokia building a BlackBerry Windows Phone are tricky, as RIM still possesses its own manufacturing facilities and would probably like to be involved in the creation of the hardware. It is within reason that RIM could supply parts to Nokia (such as physical keyboards) and the Finnish manufacturer could pull the entire project together. 

Nokia has also been developing software for Windows Phone, such as navigation and mapping technology, that can be found in most devices running on the platform. Outside of hardware, Nokia still has resources and services that it could provide to such a project. 

The Bottom Line

You take three companies with rich traditions in innovation and technology, combine their best features and release a “super phone” with the ability to automatically rise to the top of the market. What could go wrong? 

Plenty. Competition from Apple and Android could push a BlackBerry Windows Phone into the periphery of the mobile carriers' marketing strategies, or a partnership of such a magnitude could prove to be too problematic for the players involved. 

Would you buy a BlackBerry Windows Phone? What do you think would be the best feature? Let us know in the comments. 

Research In Motion’s new BlackBerry 10 operating system has been delayed to, at the earliest, early 2013. That could prove to be a deathblow to the storied but struggling smartphone maker. RIM is going to miss out on the important holiday season with BlackBerry 10, and that could prove to be the weight that finally breaks the company’s back. In its dire straits, RIM has reportedly started to consider alternatives to BlackBerry 10 and its current strategy. Does that mean aligning itself with Microsoft and its Windows Phone platform? And how would such a move remake the smartphone landscape? 

On June 29th, Reuters reported that RIM had been approached by Microsoft to use its Windows Phone platform on BlackBerry hardware. RIM, being a proud company that thinks it can pull itself out of its tailspin, declined. At least for now.

The future of RIM depends on BlackBerry 10. It has now been delayed several times, from the beginning of 2012 to the end of the year and now into 2013. BlackBerry 10 is built off of QNX, a platform that the company acquired in April 2010 and used to build the BlackBerry PlayBook that debuted in April 2011 (but was considered half-baked at the time with pertinent functionality not coming until February 2012). The longer that RIM delays BlackBerry 10 smartphones, the more untenable its situation becomes - leading to more layoffs, selling off parts of the company or worse. 

Meanwhile, Microsoft is waiting with open arms. 

RIM Does Have Assets

Outside of BlackBerry smartphones, RIM holds a variety of assets that are attractive to other companies. Microsoft, which still has a robust business in enterprise software, would love to get its hands on RIM’s proprietary network, which drives its secure messaging platform. Mobile carriers could also benefit from using the BlackBerry network - and former RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie supposedly was in negotiations with carriers at the time he was ousted from his position and replaced with former COO Thorsten Heins. RIM also controls the BlackBerry Messenger platform on its network, one of the most robust and useful messaging services in the mobile industry. Finally, RIM also owns a treasure trove of mobile patents that could be auctioned off to raise cash. 

The question that faces RIM right now is, can it get through 2012 on the strengths of its current assets and declining user base? The company would prefer to remain independent, but Heins started a “strategic review” in March to explore options. 

Microsoft Has Money to Spend

This is where Microsoft comes in. The software giant has shown it is not afraid of spending money to move aggressively into the mobile market. It has partnered with Nokia to bring more Windows Phone devices to store shelves, subsidizing much of its partner's development and marketing costs. Microsoft also pays developers (and offers free services and development support) to create apps for Windows Phone. Microsoft’s open door and billions of dollars have to be an enticing life preserver for a company that has been floundering since the iPhone was released in 2007.

RIM (11.4%) and Microsoft (4.0%) control 15.4% of the smartphone market share in the United States as of the end of May 2012, according to comScore. If RIM were to abandon BlackBerry 10 to standardize on Windows Phone 8, the goal would be to capture about between 15%-20% of the mobile market for Windows Phone.

But Would the Marriage Work?

There is no guarantee that BlackBerry users would automatically move to a BlackBerry Windows Phone instead of fleeing to Apple’s iOS or Google’s Android. RIM’s smartphone market share is almost entirely built off of existing users that have older versions of the platform, such as BlackBerry OS 5, 6 or 7. It is also unclear whether RIM would abandon its older devices running BlackBerry 7 if it also started making devices with Windows Phone 8. RIM has said that until BlackBerry 10 comes out, it will continue to aggressively market BlackBerry 7 devices. 

Also, if RIM were to abandon BlackBerry 10, it would likely take even longer to come out with new devices using Windows Phone 8 (or even Android). For example, Microsoft and Nokia announced their partnership in February 2011. They didn't announce new Windows Phone devices until October 2011, and those phones didn't reach the U.S. until April 2012.

The one thing that Research In Motion cannot afford is another delay, no matter what avenue it decides to take. Partnering with Microsoft would buy it some breathing room, presumably with an influx of cash and support, but in the meantime, RIM’s assets would continue to decay and it would likely be forced into mass layoffs and restructuring. 

Longer term, the real question is whether a combined Microsoft/RIM/Nokia beast could even challenge Apple and/or Google in the smartphone platform wars.

At this point, the answer is a resounding no. Some analysts believe that Microsoft can garner up to 15% of the smartphone market within the next couple of years, and attaching the BlackBerry name to Windows Phone devices might accelerate growth - but it's hard to see how the two together could get as big as iOS or Android. 

It makes perfect sense for Microsoft to hover like a vulture over the dying BlackBerry platform. There are a lot of attributes to like, and the BlackBerry name is still well-recognized across the world.

On the other hand, does it make sense for RIM to partner with Microsoft? As with everything that surrounds the BlackBerry maker these days, that answer is not so clear-cut. If BlackBerry 10 is delayed again or if it proves to be a bust on the market, RIM will have no choice but to make wholesale changes to its business - and being subsumed by a larger competitor like Microsoft would be a better fate than going out of business entirely. 

RIM CEO, Thorsten Heins, at BlackBerry DevCon Europe 2012

The news from Research In Motion just gets worse and worse. The maker of BlackBerry phones once dominated the smartphone market. But the rise of Apple's iPhone and a series of missteps have led the company into a period of turmoil, causing co-founders to head for the exit as the stock price plummeted more than 94% in the past four years.

RIM delivered its latest bad news after the market closed on Thursday: Earnings were considerably worse than even many bearish analysts  expected. The company reported revenue of $2.8 billion in the quarter ending June 2 and a net loss of 37 cents a share. Analysts had been looking for revenue of $3.1 billion and a loss of three cents a share.

RIM said it will lay off 5,000 employees as part of a restructuring effort that will cut $1 billion in costs. The layoffs will occur over the coming nine months and will require RIM to take a $350 million restructuring charge.

“I understand that this is an incredibly difficult message to deliver,” said Research in Motion CEO Thorsten Heins during a conference call discussing the earnings. “It is necessary to change the scale and refocus the company on areas of highest opportunity.” Thorsten said the job cuts will make RIM “lean and nimble” in a competitive industry.

Perhaps the worst news concerned Blackberry 10, a new operating software that the company has vowed will make Blackberry devices competitive again. Blackberry 10 won't be released until early 2013, several months later than the fall release RIM had promised earlier. This isn't the first time Blackberry 10 has been delayed. The company disappointed investors last December with a similar announcement.

Heins said the features that will make Blackberry 10 distinctive and competitive are simply taking a long time to get right. “I will not deliver a product to market that does not meet the needs of our customers,” he said. “There will be no compromise on this issue.” Asked by an analyst whether the delay would make the hardware that much more outdated, Heins said he wasn't concerned, since the new phones “will be more than competitive.”

The delay raises the question of what RIM can do to improve matters during the several months before the Blackberry 10 arrives. Executives said they will keep upgrading users of older Blackberry 5 and 6 models to last summer's Blackberry 7 phones and focus on growth in emerging markets. But that strategy isn't likely to work well, since RIM warned investors that it will post an operating loss in the current quarter and that “downward pressure” will weigh on operating costs for the rest of its fiscal year.

RIM's BlackBerry phones have 78 million subscribers around the world, although the company is losing market share as iPhones gain popularity abroad and Android smartphones dominate the lower end of the market. RIM said it shipped 7.8 million BlackBerry phones last quarter, and only 260,000 PlayBook tablets.

Revenue in the quarter declined 33% from the same quarter a year ago, while gross margins fell to 28% from 44%. Much of the decline was caused by lower demand for Blackberries in North America, prompting RIM to focus sales in emerging markets, where the average price per phone is lower.

One positive note: RIM's cash stockpile remains substantial. The company had $2.2 billion in cash at the end of the last quarter. CFO Brian Bidulka said in the conference call that he expects the cash position to remain steady through the current quarter, although he warned that restructuring costs could cause it to decline.

The earnings report did nothing to ease the perception that the demise of RIM is just a matter of time. Heins declined to comment on whether the company would sell itself whole or in pieces. Instead, RIM continues to pin its hopes on a new phone even as it kicks the release date down the road. That strategy is a risky one, and it's not going over well with investors. RIM's stock fell another 19% in after-hours trading, pushing the price to its lowest ebb since December 2003 and the company's market value below $4 billion.

Introducing ReadWriteWeb’s DeathWatch: highlighting businesses and technologies tottering on their last legs. Each week we’ll examine a vulnerable company, check for a pulse and look at its chance for a miracle recovery. We wish it wasn't so easy to choose the inaugural DeathWatch victim, but BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion has not had a good week. Or a good year.

The Basics:

Research In Motion (RIM) designs, manufactures and markets the BlackBerry line of smartphones, the PlayBook tablet, and various device-specific operating systems and applications. The company tends to focus on business users, and its mobile administration and management tools earned it a following in large IT departments.

The Problem:

The smartphone market that RIM created grew up and passed it by.

RIM was first to the game, which helped it jump to a huge lead, and it amassed legions of fans based on features like physical keyboards and unprecedented access to corporate IT departments with robust security and management tools.

But with the release of the iPhone and the rise of Android, BlackBerry devices became less than cool. Still, even as it stumbled with product delays, poor consumer interfaces and misguided marketing (reportedly considering “Nothing can touch it” as a slogan for its first touchscreen), RIM assumed its foothold in corporate IT was unassailable.

That assumption proved incorrect.

As iPhones and Androids became more popular among consumers, they increasingly worked their way into corporations, causing BlackBerry sales to slump in developed markets. On May 29, RIM warned of a Q1 operating loss, predicted more job cuts and announced that it had engaged bankers to perform a strategic review. All signs point to stripping down the company for a fire sale.

The Players:

President and CEO Thorsten Heins definitely knows a lot about technology (he was CTO at Siemens Communications prior to his arrival at RIM), but as this snooze of a video shows, he’s not exactly Steve Jobs (or even Tim Cook) when it comes to driving excitement and confidence. While Heins has been with the company for several years (as COO of Product Engineering), he’s new to the big stage, having been promoted to CEO in January. His COO and CMO, the two people directly responsible for developing and selling new products, joined the company earlier this month.

Moving past the people who got RIM into trouble was clearly necessary, but the newbies face a steep learning curve and not much time to effect a turnaround.

The Prognosis:

RIM is terminal. The company is toast, but it could be a long, slow death.

In his May 29 update, Heinz predicted that RIM would increase its cash on hand beyond the $2.1 billion with which it ended in 2011. With the right cuts and that kind of money, coupled with 78 million users and a growing user base in developing nations (albeit with cheaper products than those sold in the U.S.), RIM could hang on for several years.

The Blackberry 10 OS won’t change the world, but it’s years more modern and consumer-friendly than its predecessors. Best-case scenario, it staunches the bleeding, slows the erosion of RIM’s domestic user base and buys a bit more time.

That’s not likely to be enough, though. As Morgan Stanley’s Ehud Gelblum suggested in a May 30 analyst note, RIM will probably be torn apart and sold, with its collection of wireless patents the prize amidst the wreckage.

Can Anything Save It?

RIM is hanging its hopes on its long-delayed Blackberry 10 operating system, but a new OS (even a good one) will not be enough to excite app developers or mainstream consumers.

If RIM could decouple its hardware business to focus on secure, business-oriented mobile applications and management tools, a vastly scaled-down company might be able to thrive. But dramatically shrinking a huge public company - and a Canadian jewel - is likely to be very difficult even if RIM could find a buyer willing to pay a reasonable price for its cratering device business.

Bloody battles over intellectual property have become the tech world's new normal. Google just bested Oracle in an epic patent and copyright battle over the use of Java in Android. Apple is fighting in courts around the world. Technicolor, the company that brought color to the movies, is counting on patents suits as a revenue steam. A stellar infographic from visual.ly sketches the tangled alliances and conflicts among tech titans.

Technicolor doesn't appear in the infographic below. Nonetheless, the French company now has an entire division dedicated to ripping apart smartphones, looking for patent infringements the company can negotiate licenses for, according to Bloomberg. Technicolor holds 40,000 patents in video, audio and optics and is targeting large smartphone and tablet manufacturers. Once it analyzes a device, it will send the manufacturer a file that represents a starting point for negotiations. Technicolor is hesitant to sell its large patent portfolio even though the company is losing money, Bloomberg reports. That's because, as Technicolor lawyer Beatrix de Russe said, “If we start selling our patents, revenues will dry out.”

The implication is clear: Patents are not a tool for supporting innovation. They are a stick for beating money out of anyone within striking distance. 

One company, backed by some of the largest names in technology, exists almost entirely for this purpose. Rockstar Consortium came together to buy Nortel’s 6,000 mobile-related patents for $4.5 billion last year. Backed by Apple, Microsoft, Sony, Ericsson and Research In Motion, Rockstar Consortium does nothing but dig through competitors’ devices and analyze them to see if they are violating any of the 4,000 patents that the company controls. 

A quick guide to the chart below: The outside ring represents patents that have been transferred or sold. That's all the light purple lines leaving Nortel and going to companies such as Microsoft, Apple, EMC and Ericsson. IBM sold 2,094 patents to Google, which also acquired 17,000 patents when it acquired Motorola. Note all the lines extending to and from Apple. The iPhone maker is suing HTC, Nokia, Motorola Mobility, Samsung and Kodak. All of those companies have returned fire with their own patent suits against Apple. 

We posted a chart from Reuters last August showing companies embroiled in patent battles across the mobile ecosystem. Since then, some of those lawsuits have been settled and new ones have sprung up. Yet the patent firestorm only intensifies. Facebook, Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo are in a complicated, intertwining dance that began when Yahoo dropped its patent bomb on Facebook. Microsoft responded by acquiring 950 patents from AOL, of which it flipped 650 to Facebook to help protect against Yahoo. Is your head spinning yet? 

In view of this quagmire, top entrepreneurs such as Mark Cuban are calling for patent reform in the United States. “There are industries where patents are used fairly to protect intellectual property. The technology industry is not one of them,” Cuban wrote when news broke that Yahoo is suing Facebook over patents. “Ninety-nine percent of the time they are anti-competitive, corruptive, impede creativity and innovation, and can kill small businesses. The ratio of patent law doing a good job protecting company IP versus it being used purely to negatively impact competitors or to troll for un-earned revenue is probably 1,000 to 1.”

Heins took over RIM in a bad spot but, unlike chief executives from Yahoo and Hewlett-Packard, he's making the best of a bad situation. He is candid and funny and, most importantly, very honest. Heins presents a “go team” type of spirit that is encouraging for RIM after all the bad news the company has seen since the beginning of 2011. Sometimes a large company’s CEO just needs to be its biggest cheerleader. 

That cheerleading spirit and honesty was on display in Heins’s letter to investors ahead of its first quarter earnings to come out next week. He touted the attendance at the company’s BlackBerry Jam earlier this month, the excitement around BlackBerry 10, the developer ecosystem (BlackBerry App World is now up to 80,000 apps) and the RIM’s global user base (78 million). We know RIM is not doing well, but it still has $2.1 billion in the bank and a little runway in which to smooth things out.

At the end of Heins’s letter, he acknowledged RIM’s talks with banks about its financial position.

“To further enhance our commitment to successfully completing our transformation, after the release of our year-end financial results, we engaged J.P. Morgan Securities LLC and RBC Capital Markets to assist the Company and our Board of Directors in reviewing RIM’s business and financial performance.  These advisors have been tasked to help us with the strategic review we referenced on our year-end financial results conference call and to evaluate the relative merits and feasibility of various financial strategies, including opportunities to leverage the BlackBerry platform through partnerships, licensing opportunities and strategic business model alternatives,” Heins said. 

This may come as no surprise to industry watchers, but BlackBerry is looking to do whatever it takes to remain solvent. But, what exactly are, “partnerships, licensing opportunities and strategic business model alternatives?” 

Companies do not go seeking the help of J.P Morgan on a whim. Essentially, what Heins was saying is that RIM approached the banks to test the waters for a sale. If not a sale, per se, then the ability to license the actually manufacturing of BlackBerry smartphones to a different equipment manufacturer or to partner with companies to make equipment for them. For instance (and purely theoretical), a Facebook Phone built by BlackBerry. 

Strategic business model alternatives could mean just about anything. That includes getting out of the manufacturing business entirely and becoming a pure software platform provider. RIM has assets to pull that off in the areas of communications (through BlackBerry Messenger), security (BlackBerry Enterprise Server) and application development. If RIM were to choose that road, it would be a painful transition for the company and thousands of employees. 

In the letter, Heins said that RIM would be becoming a leaner machine in the near future. That means layoffs and probably a lot of them. The company has already lost a significant portion of its top executives but many of the average jobs at the company will likely go in the not-so-distant future. 

“We will also continue to review RIM's organizational structure and clearly define accountabilities for all key businesses and business processes with a goal of eliminating fragmentation, duplication and inefficiencies.  While there will be significant spending reductions and headcount reductions in some areas throughout the remainder of the fiscal year, we will continue to spend and hire in key areas such as those associated with the launch of BlackBerry 10, and those tied to the growth of our application developer community,” Heins said. 

Essentially, RIM is cutting itself back to core competencies. BlackBerry 10, which will have to be the company’s saving grace (or it will have to sell for sure), will be getting the lion’s share of resources in the near term. International sales and BlackBerry Messenger are two of RIM’s remaining strengths and will likely get a boost too. Marketing will see a bump as well, especially as BlackBerry 10 comes to off the assembly line. Anything else outside of those areas will be ripe to be sold, lose employees or outright shut down. 

All the hopes for RIM rest with BlackBerry 10. Until that is released, RIM will be hurting and shedding money. Heins’s job until that point is to keep the company afloat and explore all options, including a sale of all or part of the business. 

"Android is open for disruption.” That's what Stewart Putney, CEO of the mobile gaming company Moblyng, said last August. He was talking about the potential for HTML5 Web apps to disrupt the Android Market (now Google Play), but he may have been oddly prophetic. Android has not been riding high in 2012. More than one competitor is lining up to strike a decisive blow.

To truly disrupt Android, other OS makers face an uphill battle. It is no longer 2009, when Android stepped into a mobile market hungry for options beyond the iPhone (then only on AT&T) and the aging BlackBerry and Windows Mobile ecosystems. The market is now well established and the only two players that currently mean anything are iOS and Android.

For the sake of clarity, let’s look at the other contenders (in order of importance):

• Windows Phone: On its way to becoming a solid Number 3 behind iOS and Android.
• BlackBerry 10: Research In Motion’s next BlackBerry operating system and perhaps its last gasp to save the franchise.
• Mozilla B2G: Open, browser-based OS currently in development from Mozilla and the open source community. 
• Tizen: Formerly MeeGo. Has the backing of the Linux Foundation and Intel, and it has caught the eyes of several manufacturers looking for an alternative.
• Linux/Ubuntu: Pure, open Linux-based OS has been kicked about by the open source community, but generally unavailable in devices until 2013 at the earliest.
• webOS: Open-sourced by Hewlett-Packard, may have a legitimate future if developers embrace browser-based mobile interaction.

Microsoft and Nokia would love nothing more than to see Windows Phone eat Android’s market share. In the short term, that is not going to happen. The best Windows Phone, the Lumia 900, available through AT&T, does not measure up well with the best Android phones, either in specifications or user interface. What Windows Phone does have going for it is increasing traction with both carriers and manufacturers tired of dealing with the array of Android devices and the never-ending need to support them. Windows Phone is a known quantity and will continue to rise in market share. It will not reach the levels of Android, but it can shave 5% to 10% of its market share within a couple of years, especially if carriers continue to market and subsidize Windows Phone devices.

The problems for Windows Phone in disrupting Android are the macro-problems that face any OS aiming to usurp the crown. First, the Windows Phone Marketplace is a wasteland of copied and boring apps (with a few exceptional entries). Developer support is critical to the success of a smartphone OS, as developers create the content that drives adoption. The better a developer can fare on a platform, the harder it will work to build a productive ecosystem around it. Windows Phone and BlackBerry do not, at this point, have developer interest equivalent to Android and iOS. With almost 500,000 apps in Google Play (against 70,000 for Windows Phone and BlackBerry), conquering Android is bound to be an uphill battle. 

Manufacturers and carriers may be starting to look at throwing more weight behind Windows Phone. There are a variety of reasons for this. The most important is that Microsoft is willing to pay for visibility, and manufacturers and carriers are happy to take money whether or not Windows Phone actually sells well. 

While Windows Phone appears to be on the rise, Blackberry is still in wait-and-see mode. What will BlackBerry 10 ultimately look like? Will it be sexy enough to not only compete with the current crop of Android phones but remain viable for two or three years? To take market share back from Android, RIM needs to focus as much on what it releases this year as what that platform will look like in 2014. 

Tizen occupies an interesting space in this ecosystem. It has indirect backing from Samsung and could easily add HTC to the list of supporters if manufacturer relations turn sour with Google over its Motorola acquisition. Tizen will continue to be pushed by Intel - but the fact is that there may be little hope for it. It does not have the industry clout to disrupt Android in the short or long term. A wild card: Tizen has been seen running Android apps, a development that could give it traction.

What applies for Tizen also applies for webOS. These open source projects will likely produce nominal results and devices, at best. 

That leaves the two most intriguing candidates – Ubuntu and Mozilla. These are also open source projects, but they have significant developer communities behind them. Canonical has proposed an Ubuntu mobile operating system that has potential to step right into Android's position. One can imagine that an Ubuntu mobile OS would be very similar to Android (both with a Linux kernel) but not tied to Google. That would please Google’s manufacturer and service partners that would love to be free of Google’s regulations about how a device must behave to be allowed access to Google Play. 

Mozilla is in a different category. It is an operating system that is of the browser, by the browser. In that way, it's similar to Google’s Chrome operating system, though B2G would be specialized toward mobile devices rather than notebooks. This is where HTML5 could truly disrupt Android, as it would run through the mobile Web and not be restricted by… anything. The trick for Mozilla is to create a browser-based operating system that has all of the device capabilities that Android, iOS, BlackBerry and Windows Phone have with native APIs and hardware acceleration. That is not something the HTML5 environment does currently (at least, not well) and will be the biggest challenge for Mozilla as it develops the OS. Right now, Mozilla’s problems are technical in nature. Get the OS right first and then we can start talking about how it deals with manufacturers, carriers, developers, marketers, advertisers and the rest of the mobile ecosystem. Of all the methods and technologies used by would-be Android competitors, HTML5 has the highest ceiling. The company that pulls together a browser-based mobile operating system could fare very well, especially with developers. 

Taken individually, each would-be Android killer has strengths and flaws that will help and hinder it in trying to unseat Google. The near-term players (Windows Phone and BlackBerry) will have to battle OEMs and manufacturers and curry favor with developers. Everybody else still has to work out development and technical issues before they can gain the kind of traction that Android has created. 

Consequently, for the next two years or so, the mobile world will likely be a race between Apple and Google. 2012 will not be the Year Of Something Other Than Android. 2015 and beyond? Perhaps. 

What do you think has the greatest potential to disrupt Android? Let’s hear your picks in the comments. 

BlackBerry World 2012 is perhaps the most important event in the history of Research In Motion. If attendees, investors, developers and journalists do not walk away from the conference feeling confident that the company can turn it around with its upcoming BlackBerry 10 mobile operating system, then RIM might cease to exist as a top-tier smartphone manufacturer and software producer by the end of the year. 

So what do you do when you are down, everybody is counting you out and the future is full of nothing except uncertainty? Rally the troops, promise great things to come, put your head down and try to make it happen. Plus maybe offer a gave a few glimpses of your next big thing. Is BlackBerry 10 the platform that will save RIM?

RIM CEO Thorsten Heins' message to BlackBerry faithful has been, “let’s rock 'n' roll this.” In his distinctive geek-laden German accent, it sounds kind of awkward but also oddly sincere. When talking about BlackBerry 10 at the conference in Orlando, Fla., he played up how cool some of the new features were, eliciting applause from the crowd when it seemed like it was warranted. 

“It is so important that we get it right for you,” Heins said during the BlackBerry World keynote. “I promise to you that the whole company is laser-focused in delivering on time and exceeding your expectations. From the couple of things you have seen this morning, you see how deliberate we are in creating the BlackBerry 10 platform.”

Deliberate indeed. 

RIM bought QNX, the backbone on which BlackBerry 10 was built upon, in April 2010. It did not have a product built on QNX until the BlackBerry PlayBook was released in April 2011. That product was really not fully complete until BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 was released in February 2012. RIM is so deliberate, it is falling behind. 

Heins showed off only a couple BlackBerry 10 features on stage, with RIM's head of software portfolio Vivek Bhardwaj taking the developer alpha device through the paces. What they demonstrated was indeed interesting. One concept, called “flow,” has the ability to create cascading screens that keep discussions open and running in the background and can be accessed at a swipe. Another interesting feature was the ability to edit a photograph to a moment a few seconds before the picture was taken. We have seen this type of “pre-recording” of a picture a couple of times before, and it offers some very interesting results. RIM is calling this the “perfect moment” camera.

The biggest feature that Bhardwaj showcased was definitely the keyboard. BlackBerry is known for its physical keyboards - one reason that BlackBerry lovers warn that, “you can have my BlackBerry when you pry it from my cold, dead hands." Yet BlackBerry is in desperate need of creating a touchscreen device that does not rely on the physical keyboard. Efforts so far have been a disaster, such as the dual “capacitive/resistive touch” screen the company unveiled with the BlackBerry Storm a few years ago. 

“We are going to personalize the keyboard experience for you,” Bhardwaj said. “We are using things like modeling algorithms to learn where you press every single key. It really becomes a tailored keyboard, just like a glove.” The keyboard is gesture-based and predicts what words you are typing, allowing you to swipe words from the keyboard into the text field you are writing in. Even considering the third-party keyboard providers like SwiftKey and Swype from Nuance, we have not seen anything quite like it.

RIM is going to need more than a cool camera feature, intuitive keyboard and a new communications user interface for BlackBerry 10 to make a dent in an ecosystem dominated by iOS and Android. Heins said multiple times during his keynote that RIM would reveal only a few of BlackBerry 10's features, perhaps hoping to wow the market when the operating system is finally released. The BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha device will be available for developers at the conference, and it is likely that more information on the platform’s operating system will emerge before it is launched later this year.

There is more to BlackBerry 10 than just smartphones and tablets, though. Heins shared the stage with a black Porsche that was completely connected through BlackBerry 10. This is a natural progression for RIM, as QNX was originally designed as an operating system that functioned in vehicles. Heins said that 60% of automobile operating systems are currently running QNX.

RIM is also working hard on developer issues surrounding BlackBerry 10. It will be important for the OS to have a robust application presence when it is released later this year, and RIM says it is creating a truly next-generation platform for developers. That includes its Cascades UI framework to create apps for the PlayBook tablet and smartphones, along with BlackBerry World distribution.

So what is the verdict? Have Heins and RIM effectively rallied the troops and created sufficient buzz for what BlackBerry is going to become?

Yes and no.

The little we have seen of BlackBerry 10 looks smart and intuitive, but it is hard to judge quality and performance in a pre-packaged keynote delivered to mostly loyal supporters. The PlayBook looked like a great device, too, until it was released and everyone realized that it was not quite a finished product. For BlackBerry 10 to win in an extremely competitive, ever-evolving marketplace, RIM's deliberate pace - which is costing RIM billions of dollars in lost smartphone market share - better culminate in the delivery of a fully functional and exciting platform.

If not, Heins’ first BlackBerry World keynote could also be his last. 

Those brickbats have often been well-deserved, but RIM should also have earned some respect, if not love, for the important role it played in smartphone development and popularization - not to mention a string of iconic-at-the-time devices that significantly advanced the state of the art.

I can still remember how excited I was back in 2006 when I got my first BlackBerry. Half the size of a paperback book, the BlackBerry 8700 had virtually no multimedia capabilities. But I could do my email anywhere I went. Just as important, that push email capability worked better than any mobile email I've used before or since. (I did miss my Palm Treo 650, but that's another story...)

I was even more excited in 2008 when upgraded to a BlackBerry Curve. Now I had a real screen that could show pictures, and a way to play music on my phone, not to mention a few games and apps. Oh, and a camera. A surpassingly BAD camera, but still a camera that I used to snap - and email - photos everywhere from San Francisco to 12,000 feet up in the Chinese Himalayas. And because it ran on BlackBerry Server, it wasn't fazed by Gmail or Facebook blockages.

Yak Meadow, via BlackBerry.

But I was already realizing that my Curve was no longer on the leading edge. My friends all had iPhones, and while they couldn't do their email as fast or as securely as I could, they could do a lot more things that seemed more and more important.

That mattered to me, but it didn't seem to matter to RIM. So in 2010, when I finally got the option to choose my own smartphone, I didn't even consider getting an upgraded BlackBerry - only whether I needed an iPhone or an Android. I've never looked back.

And yet...

Now that RIM is on the ropes, it's all too easy to recall the things that I will miss about the BlackBerry:

A physical keyboard. Sure, I've gotten used to the virtual keyboards on modern touchscreen phones. And it turns out that I don't do all that much typing on them anyway. But when you needed to write on that phone, nothing beat the sure feel and positive feedback of a well-designed physical keyboard. (Of course, RIM played down that advantage as it introduced models with only standard phone keyboards or touchscreens.)

Secret confession: I miss the little wheely thing on the side of early BlackBerries that let you quickly and accurately scroll among the various menu options. The little ball in the center of the Curve was never as easy to use, and touchscreens are a whole 'nother ballgame.

Blackberry Messenger. Sure it worked only with other Blackberry users, but it was an awesome implementation of instant messaging. Way better than any third party solution on the Blackberry or other phones I've used.

A screen you could actually use in broad daylight. That screen may have been blocky and low-res, but at least you could see what was on it.

An email-first mentality. I'm old school. I still rely on email. And while I get email on my other devices, I still appreciate how RIM put email front and center on the Blackberry.

Battery life measured in geologic time. I never ran out of power during a long day on my BlackBerry. Never. I could even skip a day - or two - of charging and still stay in touch. Try that on your iPhone and you're carrying around a pretty little glass brick.

The ability to concentrate on my work without the distraction of all those apps, websites, games, and whatnot. Except, of course, for...

Brickbreaker. I spent hours sliding that little paddle around the screen, and got some decent scores. Problem is, being good at Brickbreaker is like being good at pinball - a sure sign you have too much time on your hands.

But that's just me. Enterprise communication managers will have many more reasons to mourn BlackBerry's passing. Corporate uses were key to RIM's DNA - and that's something no one ever says about Apple or Google. RIM always took enterprise security seriously, Apple and Google had to be dragged kicking and screaming to even think about the issue. If RIM is no longer a viable competitor, how long will it take Android and iOS to resume ignoring security and manageability?

So even if RIM stops making Crackberries, I'm truly hoping that BlackBerry Enterprise Server doesn't go away. In fact, I'd like to see RIM put all its emphasis on making BES the back end for all kinds of corporate mobile communications, supporting all kinds of mobile devices.

That would be a much smaller - though perhaps more profitable - company, and management still defiantly claims no interest in going down that road. But while few folks will miss BlackBerry devices, many businesses would miss BES. Focusing on the corporate market is the company's last, best hope to remain relevant. Because that little wheely thing ain't coming back.

Lead image courtesy of Shutterstock.

German BlackBerry blog BlogBerry.de sent us over an infographic (through its content promotion specialist BlueGrass Interactive) breaking down the "reality" of the native app stores. It quotes RIM VP of developer relations Alec Saunders as saying 13% of BlackBerry developers have made $100,000 or more off their apps. We have heard this song and dance before. Take a look at the infographic below and let us know in the comments what you think of the BlackBerry App World, its quality of apps and whether or not it is a wise business decision to build any apps for the BlackBerry platform these days.

The question for RIM is whether or not these updates will actually give consumers and enterprises incentive to buy the tablet. Most people's minds were made up on the PlayBook last year and it is doubtful that a software update, no matter how badly it was needed, will entice new users. It has been 10 months since the original release and the reviews at launch were that the PlayBook was half-baked. Fully baked now, will consumers care?

BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2 will include the first release of Mobile Fusion, RIM's mobile device management software that frees the BlackBerry Enterprise Server from being a RIM-only platform. Mobile Fusion will allow enterprises to manage devices from any manufacturer or platform provider. While it is interesting to see, it does not mean much in the grand scheme as it will only be available to BlackBerry smartphones and the PlayBook until the full release in late March.

The calendar app has social integration with the ability to update contact cards with real-time information from Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Contacts have also become a social hub with information from the three social networks. This is a function analogous to those in the Android and Windows Phone, which automatically searches your social networks and email contacts and update contacts appropriately.

On the enterprise said, there are new document editing functions, a "Print To Go" app and deeper control of personal and business information with BlackBerry Balance. There is also a new keyboard that institutes SwiftKey-like auto correction and predictive word completion.

With all the new core functionality, the BlackBerry Bridge app that connects the tablet to a BlackBerry smartphone becomes an obsolete feature. The Bridge was intended to provide contacts, calendar and email to the PlayBook by attaching it to your BlackBerry smartphone and was a stopgap measure until these core functionalities were released. Bridge is now being featured as a "remote for your PlayBook" and a way to share content between your smartphone and the tablet.

The Bridge app was one of the poor decisions that RIM made when releasing the PlayBook. RIM executives, speaking last year before the tablet was released, said they believed the potential market for the PlayBook would be anybody that owned a BlackBerry smartphone. At the time, that was about 55 million people. The vision was to use smartphone sales to drive tablet sales and vice versa, but that proved not to be the case. By muffing the PlayBook's original release with no native email and contacts support, the tablet was essentially doomed and users resented the fact that they had to have a RIM smartphone for such basic functionality. Bridge is now a feature as opposed to a necessity and that is the way it should have been from the beginning.

The biggest selling point for the PlayBook could now be the fact that it can run select Android apps. RIM promised Android functionality in March 2011 and delivers in February 2012. The addition of Android functionality (that RIM built itself as opposed to using a third-party system like Myriad's Davlik) greatly increases the quantity of apps available to the PlayBook. This would have been a killer feature a year ago before we saw affordable Android tablets like the Amazon Kindle Fire hit the market. In April 2010 there was not yet an Android tablet worth its weight in salt and the PlayBook had potential to steal the market if it was released with Android functionality on top of all the goodness BlackBerry is known for. A year later, the PlayBook is an also-ran in the ecosystem.

One good thing we learn from PlayBook OS 2 is that BlackBerry 10 will likely be issued with all the features originally missing from the original QNX operating system. So, whenever RIM gets around to releasing a new BlackBerry smartphone running the QNX-based BlackBerry 10 it will likely have dedicated email, calendar, contacts and Android apps. That should be good news to BlackBerry fans that have not had much good news in the past several years.

BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2 is available for download today.

Everybody is armed, forces are deployed and the battleground is chosen. Let's get this thermonuclear war started.

2011 was the year that the major mobile platform providers loaded up with ammunition in the upcoming world war between Apple, Microsoft, Research In Motion and Google. Apple acquired patents from Novell while the "Rock Star" group of RIM, Microsoft and Apple won the majority of Nortel's patents. Google went big and bought everything that Motorola owned. We know all of this already. But, that was just the staging area. The real test will be in 2012. On Monday, the United States Department of Justice approved all of those acquisitions in one fell swoop.

Steve Jobs promised to go "thermonuclear" on Android over patent violations. That seems to be a dying wish that Apple is willing to pursue. Now that the big guns are out, what will be the consequence to the mobile ecosystem? Will the arms race force a détente, powerful patent portfolios canceling each other out? Or is this the beginning of disruptive lawsuits that ultimately becomes harmful to consumers looking for choice?

Where the Guns are Pointed

We are going to try to make this as simple as possible. If you want the real grit on patent lawsuits, check out our coverage here or check on various patent issues.

For the first few rounds of patent battles, Microsoft and Apple fought a proxy war with Android and Google by bringing patent lawsuits against Android OEMs like Samsung, HTC and Motorola. The only company coming directly after Google over mobile patents was Oracle, based on its acquisition of Sun Microsystems and Android's use of Java.

Apple's cold war with Android focused on getting Android devices off the shelves in key markets. Both Samsung and HTC felt the brunt of Apple's lawsuits. Motorola has caught Apple's recent ire, with a new "anti-suit" filed this week in San Diego that accuses Motorola of using "FRAND" patents in lawsuits. FRAND stands for "fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory." A patent is determined to be a FRAND if it becomes an industry standard. Motorola, as one of the founding fathers of mobility, owns a boatload of "essential" patents, many of which surround various implementations of "3G."

The blow-by-blow of patent battles is an onerous study. Trying to explain Apple's "anti-suit" against Motorola in regards to Qualcomm based-band patents is like trying to have a conversation about quantum mechanics underwater. In this discussion, the blow-by-blow is not the point. What it boils down to is the idea of essential patents. Motorola owns many of the industry standard patents and says that it will cap its licensing fee of these patents at 2.25% of every device sold. In a market that has billions of dollars at stake, 2.25% is a pretty significant number.

The troubling thing about Motorola's suits that have use the essential patents is that it could set a difficult precedent for the industry. The notion of FRAND is that companies do not bring essential patents to court because it is not fair or reasonable to impose fees on the entire industry on industry standard technology.

The thing about all the recent patent acquisitions is that every one of the major players in the ecosystem now own significant numbers of essential patents. Nortel and Novell patent repositories held significant numbers of essential patents, one of the reasons that the bidding was out of control.

This chart from Reuters was published in Aug. 2011 but still gives a pretty good idea of who is suing whom in the patent wars.

The question now becomes: what will be done with these patents?

The Cost to the Consumer

The primary concerns the U.S. Department of Justice expressed when approving the three acquisitions surrounded these standard essential patents (SEPs). For a breakdown of the issue, read the DOJ's full statement issued on Monday regarding the approval process.

There are a few key takeaways:

• The division's concerns about the potential anticompetitive use of SEPs was lessened by the clear commitments by Apple and Microsoft to license SEPs on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms, as well as their commitments not to seek injunctions in disputes involving SEPs. Google's commitments were more ambiguous and do not provide the same direct confirmation of its SEP licensing policies.

• Apple's and Google's substantial share of mobile platforms makes it more likely that as the owners of additional SEPs they could hold up rivals, thus harming competition and innovation. For example, Apple would likely benefit significantly through increased sales of its devices if it could exclude Android-based phones from the market or raise the costs of such phones through IP-licenses or patent litigation. Google could similarly benefit by raising the costs of, or excluding, Apple devices because of the revenues it derives from Android-based devices

The DOJ noted that Microsoft and RIM's low market share makes it unlikely either company could bring lawsuits based on essential patents because it would ultimately prove unprofitable.

Where does this whole mess lead us? The DOJ's concerns are that patent litigation will lead to competitors extorting higher rates from each other, hence making it less profitable to be in the mobile business and more expensive for the consumer. While Motorola or other Android OEMs would love to block the sale of Apple products in certain countries, the real goal is to extract money from the iPhone maker. Apple has plenty of money and one of the reasons it is sitting on its pile of cash is to fight these lawsuits and provide a buffer to its profitability. Apple has the ability to have Android devices taken off store shelves and has done it with HTC and Samsung in the past.

So, what does thermonuclear patent war look like? Higher prices for consumers, the squeezing of the ecosystem in such a way that weaker companies die off, stifling of innovation because of regulatory or legal concerns and the slowdown of product releases that have the potential to shape the fundamental nature of how people live there lives.

Without Android, Apple would love to issue every man, woman and child in the world an iPhone, subsidized through the carriers. It can continue its iterative and boring product release schedule. Android would love to push the iPhone and its profit gobbling monstrosity out of the industry but then people would be deprived of the one splendid device that has come to define a generation.

Patent agreements, especially surrounding standard essential patents, are a cost of doing business in our modern industry. But, when business start taking innovative products off shelves and forcing competitors into bankruptcy, a line has been crossed. The industry now stands on the edge of a knife. With everybody armed to the teeth will they find a way to co-exist or will they fire their warheads to the detriment of all?

Top image courtesy Shutterstock

The pincer formation at the top of the ecosystem means that no regulatory agency can deny Google its $12.5 billion purchase. Life has also become extremely difficult for all the other OEMs and mobile platforms trying to make a dent in the market. If you are not making an iDevice or some type of Galaxy product, Apple and Samsung are squeezing you out of the market. The clock is ticking.

By the Numbers

According to Walkley, HTC had 3% of the device industry's total fourth quarter profits, Nokia and Research In Motion each had 2% while Motorola and LG both broke even. Apple had 80% while Samsung had 15%.

Do not expect Apple to maintain 80% of profits in the mobile ecosystem on a quarter-by-quarter basis. The blowout by Apple may never be seen again (or, perhaps one quarter a year when a new iPhone is released). The third quarter of 2011 may be more indicative of Apple's place in the ecosystem at 56% of profits. That is dominant but not quite as mind numbing.

Samsung takes up about 40% of the Android ecosystem. HTC is a solid second and Motorola third with LG and Sony Ericsson bringing up the long tail. Samsung also sells Windows Phones (with HTC and Nokia) and its own Bada system (which competes with Nokia's S Series across the world).

The world needs a strong No. 3 in the mobile ecosystem. Ostensibly, that is Nokia with its dominance in emerging markets. Profits do not necessarily come from emerging markets though and Nokia's push to reclaim territory in North America goes to show how important the high-end smartphone market is to the OEMs. Apple has 8.1% of the global mobile market but its profits are 10-times that number.

The statements made by European Commission VP Joaquin Almunia in regards to the Motorola acquisition by Google are very telling of the state of the mobile ecosystem: "We have approved the acquisition of Motorola Mobility by Google because, upon careful examination, this transaction does not itself raise competition issues. Of course, the Commission will continue to keep a close eye on the behaviour of all market players in the sector, particularly the increasingly strategic use of patents."

Key phrase: "this transaction does not itself raise competition issues." Well, of course it does not. Motorola would have to have major market share to be considered a competitor to the likes of Samsung and Apple. For the past several years, that has just not been the case. Any notion that Google would favor Motorola over other Android ecosystem players has become laughable.

If Google favors anybody at this point, it is its largest partner in crime, Samsung. The Korean cellphone maker is Google's biggest hedge against the absolute domination by Apple and the best Android evangelist on the planet. It is no mistake that Samsung has been awarded the last two Nexus devices, Android's flagship handset.

The Carriers' Conundrum

Mobility is exploding. We hear about it every day from a variety of industry segments. Advertising, analytics, publishers, frameworks and tools makers, cloud services, "as a service" providers, social networking, payments, games and gamification, e-commerce, deals, offers, retail, local news (retail, advertising etc.), transportation, healthcare ... to name a few. Yet, the companies that provide the mobile infrastructure are actually shrinking. Android and iOS are locking just about everybody out. The figureheads behind those platforms - Samsung and Apple - are vacuuming all the profit (and much of the incentive) out of the industry.

In its last quarterly earnings call, AT&T promised that it would have to institute harsh data rate penalties because of its so-called spectrum paucity. Users with grandfathered "unlimited" plans are now seeing their data speeds throttled after about 2.3 GB of usage (depending on the "top 5%" in a given area). AT&T sells a 3GB plan for $30, the same as the unlimited plan. Verizon has also instituted similar data throttling. The carriers have to squeeze more average revenue per user out of the ecosystem because their profits are being cut into by the OEMs that force them to subsidize devices like the iPhone and Galaxy. Since Apple and Samsung drive sales, the companies can dictate terms to the carriers and the end result usually is not good for consumers.

One of the reasons that the carriers are so interested in developing their own personal clouds, apps stores, enterprise solutions, payment processors, content delivery and other variety of value-added services is because they fear being turned into dumb pipes for the ecosystem created by the OEMs and software developers. Users often balk against this kind of pre-loaded carrier "bloatware" but it is an action to affect control of an ecosystem that it otherwise has little control over.

For OEMs, Time Is Running Out

Other OEMs are feeling the pain of Apple and Samsung's dominance. Research In Motion (while mostly responsible for its own fate) has fallen off the grid with BlackBerry. Hewlett-Packard's webOS was open sourced after HP bungled its first series of devices and cut the cord on the project. Nokia's MeeGo was doomed when it thought it would rely on x86 chips from Intel and Symbian is nearing its own end of life. These are all examples of companies making mistakes and getting buried by the top performers.

Microsoft made the strategic decision to dump its aging Windows Mobile CE line and rebuild with Windows Phone. It was a necessary but ill-timed switch coming in the middle of Apple and Android's explosion. Samsung, HTC and Nokia are on board to create Windows Phone devices either as a hedge to Android reliance or through some type of deal with Microsoft. Windows Phone is not just some side project for Microsoft and it has committed billions of dollars to the project. While Microsoft does feel the squeeze coming from Apple and Samsung's Android division, it has the money to ride out see its plan to fruition. It is the perfect counter-example to the rest of the mobile ecosystem that does not have the money to survive in an environment where two giant companies eat all of the profits.

That is why time is running out for many of these companies (RIM is especially put on notice). There is only so long a company can float along without making serious profits in the mobile ecosystem. Motorola and Google will have some time if the two stick together and Google will be fine by itself as the purveyor of Android to the masses. Yet, if Google spins off the Motorola handset division, the OEM likely will not last more than a couple of years against Apple and Samsung at the rate the two companies are gobbling up available customers and cash.

When it comes down to it, the European Commission and U.S. Department of Justice could find no real reason to turn down the MotoGoo merger. All of the major players are now well stocked with patents (which is a separate but important story here) and the economics of competition show that MotoGoo can only make a nominal dent, if Google retains the handset division.

While many consumers and pundits may praise Apple and Samsung for building strong business practices and dominating market share in mobile, the top-heavy structure of the market will not be good for the long term viability of many other players in the ecosystem.

Top image courtesy Shutterstock

Android rose to the top of the smartphone heap by sheer volume. It has a plethora of original equipment manufacturers pumping out new devices every week that are distributed across the four major U.S. mobile carriers along varying price points. Why has Apple caught up? Well, because it now does that too.

For the most of the life of the iPhone, its major limiting factor? It was only available at AT&T. In March of 2011, the iPhone 4 came to Verizon and the world seemingly rejoiced. While Verizon iPhone sales have been solid, they have not been quite as killer as Apple or the pundits had originally thought. People have expensive contracts and early termination fees to contend with and the notion of jumping from one carrier to another does not make sense for a lot of consumers.

Those AT&T contracts are starting to expire. That does not mean users are dropping the nation's second largest cellular operator in droves, but would-be iPhone buyers finally have freedom of choice. There are also a variety of price points available. The iPhone 3GS is now free from AT&T on a contract. The iPhone 4 is $99 on Verizon and AT&T with a contract while the iPhone 4S is available across AT&T, Verizon and Sprint for $199. That makes the iPhone available to more than 260 million Americans whereas it used to only be available to the 95-100 million or so on AT&T.

Market depth + price = more smartphone sales. It should come as no surprise and we have been curious to see these numbers since Apple made the announcement of the 4S last October. It is also no surprise that the 4S is leading the charge. Of new iPhone buyers, 57% chose the 4S.

Of all smartphone owners (not just recent acquirers) that Nielsen surveyed, 46.3% are Android owners. Apple has risen several points in the overall market share to 30%. Research In Motion's BlackBerry has dropped precipitously in these types of surveys, going from near 22% at this time last year to 6% of new buyers in Q4. Windows Phone and Windows Mobile (which indeed still exists) made up for 3.8% of new users and 5.9% overall in Nielsen's numbers with Windows Mobile making up for 4.6% of that.

The smartphone market is cyclical. Apple made its big push with iOS 5 and the iPhone 4S in the fall. The company is likely to do that again this year with a late season rollout of the iPhone 5. Meanwhile, it is time for Android to reassert itself as version 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich makes its way to new devices across carriers. The seesaw battle will continue and when we see Nielsen's numbers for Q1 or Q2, the tone of this story might be quite different.

It is not like Android is losing much steam. Of recent acquirers, more than half chose Android at 51.7% in Q4. The growth of Android and Apple comes to the detriment of, well, everybody else, but especially RIM. Of all smartphones purchased in Q4, 88.7% were either iOS or Android. That leaves several billion dollar companies such as Microsoft, RIM and to a certain extent Hewlett-Packard to battle over a very small slice of the pie.

The name BBx (albeit with a small "x") is being used by Basis Software of Albuquerque as a trademark for its Business BASIC language interpreter, which is a classic language interpreter capable of extending business logic established over the previous decades to a platform that reaches smartphones, including BlackBerrys. Perhaps the most startling element of this case came from RIM, whose U.S.-based subsidiary had claimed in court, according to the judge's ruling, that the Singapore developers' conference to which the restraining order applies is not all that important to anyone in America.

"RIM argues that its alleged conduct would have an insufficient effect on United States commerce to grant an injunction," reads Judge William P. Johnson's ruling yesterday, "pointing out that the upcoming Singapore conference is intended to serve customers in Asia and that only several of the 700 people who will be attending the conference will be from the United States. RIM also contends that the conference will not be broadcast live, and any references on the Internet to the conference will not have the required significant effect on commerce."

By contrast, Judge Johnson went on, Basis Software argued that it would be naïve for RIM or anyone else to assume that the effect of an Asia developers' conference would be limited to Asia. "The Court agrees with this assessment," he wrote, "finding it somewhat ironic that the very nature of the disputed software product is making world-wide dissemination of information more easily accessible than before."

"BlackBerry 10" was a name that had been bandied about in the press and elsewhere as a likely name for its completely new operating system, which was previewed last October in San Francisco. The new system represents a developmental dead-end for BB OS 9, whose architecture could not adequately be extended to the emerging tablet market that RIM must also cover, preferably not with a separate OS as is the case with today's PlayBook.

One of the developmental hurdles the next BlackBerry system continues to face - one for which developers worldwide will indeed be looking to Singapore for clues to a solution - concerns a key element of its authentication mechanism. Historically, BlackBerry users have been associated with single phones, with the understanding that it wouldn't make sense for someone to own two or three mobile phones. The emergence of the tablet changes all that. Today, for a PlayBook tablet to access a BlackBerry user's account, it must be tethered to a physical BlackBerry phone, a connection which the manufacturer (unsuccessfully) tried to market as fun and exciting.

Another hurdle concerns the new system's identity, the name change for which may (just as ironically) reveal the limited effect it may have on the consumer mindset.

There are several kinds of mobile developers. There are independent software vendors, contractors, hobbyists, moonlighting engineers, entrepreneurs, in-house and B2B/B2C focused developers. The strength a given mobile platform has much to do with how many quality developers it can attract to it.

Attracting Developer Mindshare

According to VisionMobile's findings, iOS has reached the most developers while Android has the most amount of "mindshare" (percentage of developers using the platform). Apple has done this through the notion "a clever mix of emotional and business incentives," according to the report. That includes the "coolness" factor along with easy branches to monetization for iOS apps. Android's openness attracts developers to its platform while Microsoft is known to subsidize developers to port their apps to the Windows Phone ecosystem.

Each of the major mobile platforms has a unique language used as the primary way of building apps. Apple uses Objective-C while Microsoft uses .NET through C#. BlackBerry and Android are the closest to each other with versions of Java. WebOs functions Javascript with heavy doses of HTML and CSS and is one of the closest mobile languages to desktop-based Web development.

In terms of native tools, Android, webOS and BlackBerry use Eclipse while Microsoft uses Microsoft Visual Studio and Apple has XCode. To develop for Windows Phone you must use a Windows computer, same for Apple and Mac. If you go to a hackathon in the near future, look at what developers are using for application development. Most times you will see Macs on the table because a Mac can create apps for both iOS and Android.

In terms of the lifeblood of developer tools, Android and iOS provide the most comprehensive APIs that help developers cut down on the amount of original code they have to write. For Android that means integration into all of Google's apps with the most important ones being location and maps while Apple's device access APIs and other offerings give developers the best access to the hardware. In developing mindshare for developers, these frameworks are the most powerful tools in the arsenals of both Android and iOS and where other platforms are lacking.

Network Effects & Application Platforms

VisionMobile notes that there are three different kinds of mobile platform types: software platforms, application platforms and communications platforms. Software platforms are services like Symbian and BREW (one of the first feature phone operating systems from Qualcomm that supported apps) that are for sharing of software development costs and risks. Communications platforms are the basics of telephony - calls, texts and services like BlackBerry Messenger (among other messaging platforms).

Application platforms are what we have come to know as the primary smartphone operating systems. The platforms are for connecting developers to users. In the mobile world Apple does this through the App Store, Google through the Android Market, Microsoft through the Windows Phone Marketplace and Research In Motion through the BlackBerry App World.

As we mentioned earlier today, application platforms create network effects which VisionMobile defines as, "Applications attract users, which attract developers to create more applications, which attract more users, which attract more developers, and so forth."

See the chart below on how brands, OEMs, users and developers interact with Android as an application platform.

Developers are the major driver for platform adoption, VisionMobile states. It costs Apple $2,300 to acquire a publisher for iOS according to the report but that turns out to be money well spent once the application ecosystem reaches critical mass.

Developers: what have the major platforms done to lure your interest? Do you code for one platform or all of them? What platform did you start coding for first and why? If you were to make that decision based on what you know today, would it be the same? Let us know in the comments.