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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?

Since Research In Motion made BlackBerry synonymous with smartphones in the early aughts, the company has taken a pounding for mis-steps, delays, intentional blindness, equivocations and most tellingly, mediocre products.

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.

If you liken app stores to race horses, Apple is the biggest, baddest thoroughbred in town. Google Play is a fine specimen with some distinct qualities but has a lot of work to do in the practice yard before catching up. Everything else is an also-ran. Windows Phone has been growing rapidly, increasing from 40,000 apps in Nov. 2011 to 70,000 at the most recent count. Then there is BlackBerry App World. For all of Research In Motion's troubles, its app repository is tied with Windows Phone at 70,000, which includes 15,000 specifically designed for the BlackBerry PlayBook. There are no tablet apps in the Windows Phone Marketplace, mostly because there is no Windows tablet (well, one worth anything).

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.

I updated my Blackberry Playbook yesterday to the new OS, and I was struck with a confluence of ironies when it comes to the current crop of tablet computers: We have a company that made its name in messaging (RIM) that took a year to deliver a substandard email app to its tablet. We have a company that made its name in graphical interfaces (Apple) that doesn't support many graphical websites on its tablet. And we have a company that made its name in online ecommerce (Amazon) that delivers a substandard Web browsing experience on its tablet.

Wouldn't it be nice to have the best of all three rolled up into one? Yes it would. But we aren't going to see that anytime soon. I am not alone: our story yesterday about common tablet gripes can be found here.

Better late than never, right? Research In Motion has released the next iteration of its BlackBerry PlayBook OS that (finally) brings some core functions to the tablet that were missing when the slate was released in April 2010. That includes a dedicated email client with a unified inbox, calendar and contact apps, improved document editing and an updated BlackBerry Bridge. It will also run select Android apps.

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?

If there were any uncertainty that Google's acquisition of Motorola would be approved by regulatory agencies across the world, one only has to look at the fourth quarter of 2011 to see why it never was in danger. The last quarter of 2011 showed us which companies really control the smartphone market and Motorola was certainly not one of them. Between Apple and Samsung, the two behemoths controlled 95% of mobile phone profits worldwide, according to Canaccord Genuity analyst Michael Walkley.

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.

A temporary restraining order issued by a federal court in Albuquerque on behalf of a software company that produces a version of BASIC, has compelled Research In Motion to start calling the next version of its operating system for BlackBerry smartphones "BlackBerry 10." This according to a tweet from the company's official Twitter feed.

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.

Research In Motion wants you to believe that there is a good reason developers should write apps for the BlackBerry platform. RIM touts that sales are up 44% in the last year from 50 million to 70 million and that the BBX with the BlackBerry Messenger Connect provides an easy to develop for platform that can help developers get paid.

Developers and the purchasing public are not quite buying it yet. The approach to RIM right now is a "let's wait and see" approach, especially with the release of BBX coming sometime in early 2012. RIM's developer strategy is tied directly to HTML5, perhaps to the detriment of native BlackBerry applications. RIM needs to get its story straight for developers moving forward is the BBX ecosystem is to flourish.

Research In Motion announced yesterday that it is launching a beta of the Native SDK for BlackBerry Tablet OS that will allow game developers to code in C/C++ and take advantage of a deeper API set. Developers can create games for the BlackBerry PlayBook using the Standand Template Library and the Open GL ES. Given the decline of the BlackBerry platform over the last year, how many developers are still actively creating apps for either the Tablet OS or smartphones?

RIM has been fairly active in creating and updating its developer tools for both the QNX operating system for the PlayBook and for the BlackBerry OS for smartphones. Eventually, these two platforms will merge, probably early next year. Questions for developers: is it harder to code for BlackBerry apps? With the domination of Android and iOS, is it even worth it anymore?

Since BlackBerry acquired QNX Neutrino in April 2010, the questions naturally veered to "when will we see a QNX BlackBerry smartphone?" In September last year, Research In Motion announced the PlayBook tablet running QNX, which was released in April of this year. Rumors are now leaking out that the first QNX smartphone, the BlackBerry Colt, is scheduled for early 2012.

RIM has struggled with QNX. The company bought it because of its flexibility (running the computers of vehicles and planes) and its security. Yet, RIM has had problems shrinking the operating system into the tablet form factor and even more into smartphones. The PlayBook launched without native calendar, email or contacts support because of problems integrating QNX with the BlackBerry Enterprise Server. Will RIM have those issues fixed by the time the Colt comes out next year?