Today was BlackBerry World 2012, and the below video was shown during the keynote which gives a first look at some of key features built into the BlackBerry 10 platform. Most notably the new homescreen with 4 widgets, predicative text virtual keyboard with swipe-up to complete, swipe gestures for notifications and shortcuts, and a camera technology where you can rewind time to find the perfect picture. Check out Engadget's BlackBerry 10 roundup including a look at the dev alpha phone.

Check out my reply to a discussion on @gdgt if #RIM should abandon #BlackBerry 10 and adopt Android or Windows Phone http://t.co/z9rLN1o3

Your local “Canadian living in the US” here, I’ll start off by saying anyone who knows me knows I’m an Android fanboy, but I can’t help but support the hometown hero, I’m also one to often cheer for the underdog (eg. webOS).

BlackBerry Outside the US

I think the situation for RIM is a little different outside the US, or even more so, outside the Tech scene a lot of us are a part of. The BlackBerry is traditionally a business phone. “BlackBerry Internet Service is available in 91 countries worldwide on over 500 mobile service operators”. When I was back in Canada I would often hear business people “oh, send me your PIN” (Personal Identification Number for BBM). Or “Yeah, I’ll ping you later” - something tells me it’s both a play on PIN and the networking name. It's in some ways part of a business culture.

See davidribeiro94’s comment “RIM is still going very strong here in Canada, UK, and a bunch of countries in Asia. Every single week there's someone on Facebook posting his/her BB PIN”.

Back in Canada, 4 of my family members have BlackBerry’s. Honestly, I’m looking forward to RIM launching their BBM app on Android, to keep in touch since my family's always BBMing each other (it’s free, like iMessage on iPhone).

Governments and Corporations

Government and a lot of corporations equip their employees with BlackBerry’s as “work phones”. RIM has nailed that market, and I bet is a significant part of their revenue stream and probably why they aren’t going anywhere. Out of anyone Windows phones might be able to take them on in this area. Those gov/corps don’t want to move away from blackberry because they know it’s secure, it would be costly to change, and mean training their tech’s on new hardware / software to support.

Profitability?

If you look at Wikipedia they seem to make 5 billion more sales than their previous year, year over year. As well as increasing net income at 25% - 50% year over year. Source: wikipedia.org

That doesn’t seem like an indicator of a company that’s going away anytime soon. Despite this though, their stock hit an almost all time low of $12/share Dec 20th, 2011. The stock has since been on a general rise over the last month, likely due partially to their announcement of Playbook OS 2.0.

Positioning Themselves - Their Future

I think the general consensus of this thread is RIM has to refocus. Which I think even they realize (In July 2011, they cut 2,000 jobs). I’m not sure if being just another skin of Android is the solution though. They know they've got the business users covered, their challenge is to make phones cool enough to get the general consumer to choose them. They have the best keyboard phones on the market, solid Exchange and messaging, and It’s not like they’re not trying new cool things - PlayBook OS 2.0 looks pretty good, they borrow a lot of concepts from webOS (Card View, Synergy, etc) and ICS: http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/10/blackberry-playbook-os-2-hands-on .

Experience the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet -- the world's first professional-grade tablet. High performance at every turn -- small enough to take anywhere, powerful enough to take you everywhere. This is the one you've been waiting for.

BlackBerry PlayBook apps will be written in Adobe AIR http://bit.ly/bBvnHm (via @emphilip) #blackberry ~ that's kinda cool!

Preview of the new professional-grade BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet and BlackBerry® Tablet OS.

Gowalla 1.0 for #BlackBerry Released http://bit.ly/cedRT9 ~ Might have to give it a try, prob only way to check-in to FB Places right now

With BlackBerry being historically such a business device, it’s only fitting that there be a proper LinkedIn application – the social network defined specifically for business. With the upcoming LinkedIn app you’ll be able to see your contacts status updates, review profiles before a meeting, integrate LinkedIn contacts into your BlackBerry contacts and know when you’re receiving LinkedIn messages via a hip new icon.

A new version of the private beta #foursquare app for #blackberry has been leaked, v1.0.1: http://bit.ly/4sqleak

Wow, I'm not alone! There are a lot of #googlereader users who wish there was a decent app for the #blackberry http://bit.ly/7ZezHo

Last week was a big one for Seesmic. We launched 3 new products; Seesmic for Windows, Seesmic on Android, and Seesmic for BlackBerry. Learn more at http://www.seesmic.com

#BlackBerry just pushed out an update to the #Facebook App http://bit.ly/5Cnd0m --> Loving ability to see Link posts and filters

Car Finder has to be one of the most useful augmented reality app to hit for the iPhone 3GS/Blackberry. This app uses the built-in GPS and Compass in the iPhone 3GS to locate and track the car you have parked from anywhere you are.

Is running apps such as gTalk, UberTwitter, & Latitude in background much of a #blackberry battery kill?