Research in Motion (RIM) is based in Waterloo, ON, Canada. It’s a nice little city, and it’s home to the company that designed, built, launched and supported the BlackBerry cell phone. The incoming President of the USA, one B. H. Obama, was a dedicated BlackBerrian, and the Secret Service and other spook agencies had to be sure that the Prexy’s gadget was really, really secure. The Prez had lots of company, since enthusiasts for the the BB were legion and their devotion fierce. So, it was bad news when the high-flying company ran into very stiff storm winds in the form of phones from Apple and Google and Samsung and all.  RIM was not ready with a comparable product and the design/production schedule started to slip. As vultures began to circle, industry observers were not cheery about the outlook. But, according to a piece today in Technology Review, the embattled Canadian Empire may be ready to strike back, hard. RIM has a new phone, the BlackBerry 10, which can/should/might go a long way toward retrieving RIM’s sagging fortunes. You can review the tech specs at the link, but what I found interesting were two points: despite the drop in subscribers, RIM still has almost 70 million customers, and these customers are very loyal. They really like the device and the secure email feature, which was one of RIM’s major strengths.  It seems that a lot of the BB owners did not abandon RIM when the going got rough and the other options seemed very glitzy, simply because they like their BBs and were hanging on, confident that RIM could catch up. That’s real faith. So, be on the watch for BB10.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/510321/rim-is-down-but-not-out/