The co-CEOs of embattled BlackBerry maker Research in Motion have stood down in favour of COO Thorsten Heins with the company saying it was "acting on the recommendation of its co-chief executive officers to implement the succession plan they previously submitted to the board."

RIM’s status as a super-secure provider of email access has been dented a little thanks to news of a hack that could allow a very organised hacker to target a non-tech savvy Playbook user and read their emails and calendar entries, while the RIM sale rumours keep on coming, with Samsung fingered as the latest potential buyer.

Rumours are circulating that Amazon, Microsoft and Nokia have  had informal or formal merger discussions with Research in Motion in recent months, but with none of these discussions progressing to the stage of a formal bid.

Research in Motion has confirmed that products running its next operating system - formerly named BBX but now BlackBerry 10 - will not be available until the latter part of calendar 2012.

BBX is dead.  Long live Blackberry 10.

US software company, BASIS International, has secured a temporary restraining order preventing Research In Motion from using the term BBX to denote its upcoming operating system.

Following the recent launch in Australia of two NFC capable BlackBerry smartphones, Research In Motion has teamed up with Sydney NFC specialist Tapit to promote the use of NFC in phones.

Research In Motion has announced BlackBerry Mobile Fusion, an enterprise mobility solution for BlackBerry, Android and iOS smartphones and tablets.

Korean giant Samsung was the clear winner in the global smartphone market during Q3 2011, but its lead over second placed Apple will be under threat because of the phenomenal success of the iPhone 4S with its killer voice command app Siri, according to a new report. Meanwhile, HTC has been a big upward mover while Nokia has halted its decline.

Research In Motion has unveiled a new platform for BlackBerry devices, BlackBerry BBX, claiming that it takes the best of the BlackBerry platform and the best of the QNX platform that underpins its Playbook tablet.