Research In Motion executivess took the stage during BlackBerry DevCon Europe on Tuesday to clear up a few facts about the company’s success with its BlackBerry App World marketplace. RIM’s new CEO Thorsten Heins said BlackBerry App World is now home to more than 60,000 applications, which is a fraction of what’s available in the Android Market or iTunes App Store, and that BlackBerry devices are among the most popular smartphones purchased in the United Kingdom. RIM’s vice president o...

At last month’s Consumer Electronics Show, Research in Motion previewed the company’s upcoming BlackBerry PlayBook 2.0 update, which we exclusively reported would land in mid-February. The anticipated update will give PlayBook users the ability to use Android apps that have been compiled for RIM’s platform, but getting developers on board remains the issue. RIM is taking steps to get the attention of developers, however, and one of the first is to offer free BlackBerry PlayBook tablets to ...

Research In Motion’s newly appointed chairwoman of board Barbara Stymiest vowed on Thursday that the changes sweeping the struggling smartphone vendor will continue. RIM announced late last month that company co-founders Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis were stepping down from their roles as co-CEOs and co-chairmen of the board following more than a year of investor unrest. Replacing them atop RIM’s management team was Thorsten Heins, and Barbara Stymiest was named chairwoman of the board. Heins g...

We reported on RIM’s 2012 release schedule earlier this week and now we’re back to paint a more complete picture with RIM’s full 2012 roadmap, which is loaded with information. The deck provides details on everything from the company’s upcoming BlackBerry PlayBook with built-in 3G, to the new Curve lineup including the BlackBerry Curve 9220 and BlackBerry Curve 9320, to new features like Wi-Fi media server sharing and more. From the calendar in the document, it looks like the first Bla...

We’ve been gathering info on what exactly Research In Motion is planning to release over the next year and even into early 2013, and we now have a solid picture to share with you. While BlackBerry smartphones and devices will run on BlackBerry 10 starting in the fall, the company is still planning to launch BlackBerry 7 legacy devices in emerging and global markets leading up to the first BlackBerry 10 handset launch later this year. Let’s go through what we’re looking at from RIM over the n...

Research In Motion hasn’t just had a difficult time innovating since the iPhone was first introduced, the company has had trouble innovating ever since its product started to morph into something more than a simple email messaging device. RIM has always been behind the curve with regard to technology in some ways. It was still making devices with black and white displays when other manufacturers were launching devices with vibrant full-color screens. RIM was one of the last manufacturers to launch an ED...

Research In Motion is reportedly working on two new BlackBerry PlayBook tablets that are currently scheduled for release in 2012. BlackBerry watcher N4BB claims that while RIM had initially scrapped plans to produce a larger PlayBook tablet, the vendor now plans to release both a 10-inch and a new 7-inch tablet this year. RIM’s new 7-inch model will feature embedded 3G connectivity when it launches in April according to the report, and the 10-inch BlackBerry tablet will reportedly include support for 4G...

Research In Motion didn’t unveil any new devices at the Consumer Electronics Show this year, but the Waterloo, Ontario-based vendor still managed to appease fans with a preview of its first major PlayBook OS update that will finally be released some time next month. We spent a good amount of time putting the OS 2.0 through the paces and while there are still some kinks to iron out — we had apps crash on us a number of times — we absolutely walked away impressed. Check out our hands-on photos in the ...

Countless analysts predicted Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet would be a big seller this holiday season, and new data suggests that the slate may have been the most gifted tablet this past Christmas. Advertising network Chitika saw traffic across its network from the Kindle Fire grow roughly 20% each day leading up to Christmas, and traffic then exploded by more than 120% between December 24th and 25th. Research In Motion’s BlackBerry PlayBook saw the second biggest spike on Christmas Day, up  just o...

Research In Motion’s BlackBerry PlayBook tablet became the first BlackBerry device to be rooted this past November, granting users access to the device’s file system and allowing a level of customization that BlackBerry users have not had in the past. As RIM enters into the cat and mouse game Apple knows all too well, PlayBook owners willing to root their devices now have access to the Android Market as well as the apps contained within. CrackBerry has published a complete how-to guide that detai...

Research In Motion’s debut tablet has been something of a disappointment for the Waterloo, Ontario-based vendor. While the slate showed promise, it failed to offer potential users a compelling reason to choose it over the iPad or an Android tablet, and RIM would end up taking a $485 million charge in the third fiscal quarter due to unsold PlayBook inventory. Sale pricing ahead of the holidays last year seemingly helped RIM and its distribution partners clear out some stock, however, as the company is o...

2011 was a huge year for the wireless industry. Global mobile connections surpassed 6 billion as the world’s total population hit 7 billion people, and worldwide smartphone penetration is now approaching 10%. In the United States, smartphone penetration has now topped 44% as converged, connected devices continue to flood the market across all age ranges. The rapid growth in the smartphone space can be attributed for the most part to two platforms, Android and iOS, and other companies continue to strugg...

Apple rocked the consumer electronics industry when it launched the “magical and revolutionary iPad” in April 2010. It wasn’t the first media tablet aimed at the consumer market by any means, but it was the first that consumers actually wanted. Following the iPad’s unveiling, Apple’s rivals scrambled to build tablets of their own and market research firms were quick to herald 2011 as “the year of the tablet.” More than 100 different tablets were unveiled at the Consum...

Research In Motion on Thursday reported earnings for the third quarter of fiscal 2012. The struggling smartphone vendor announced earlier this month that it would miss its third-quarter guidance of between $5.3 billion and $5.6 billion in revenue, and it said EPS would likely be in line with the low end of its earlier guidance. The numbers are now in, and RIM pulled in $5.2 billion last quarter while recording earnings of $1.27 per share, or $667 million, beating its lowered guidance. RIM shipped 14.1 million...