RIM's Stock Surges as BlackBerry 10 Nears Release

It appears that one of the technology industry's most troubled companies may soon be staging a comeback. BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion (RIM) has just announced that its newest mobile operating system, BlackBerry 10, will begin to ship to consumers by late January, 2013.

The news has led to a remarkable spike in RIM's recently languishing stock price.

2012/2013: Years RIM Would Like to Forget

The last two years have represented a tough period for Canadian firm Research in Motion, which produces the BlackBerry smartphone. The formerly-innovative firm has struggled to prevent its customers from ditching their BlackBerrys in favor of Apple iPhones and Google Android-based devices.

The company also faced serious difficulty as it tried to branch out into new areas of the technology market. For example, upon its release last year, RIM's PlayBook tablet computer almost immediately fell flat with end users.

A string of recent failures have sent RIM's popularity, and its stock price, plummeting. In an attempt to pull out of what often seemed like a power dive, in the past 18 months or so the firm has undergone a major management restructuring and also laid off thousands of employees.

BlackBerry 10: A New Operating System for New Devices

Despite its ongoing troubles, there's always been one great hope for RIM: BlackBerry 10. It's a new mobile operating system that will present consumers with a whole new user interface, and RIM plans to back it up by releasing a slew of new smartphone devices to make use of its new power and features.

So far, reviews of BlackBerry 10 are generally positive. Fox News recently called it "pretty awesome," while T-Mobile USA's chief executive officer John Legere said he's "extremely optimistic that it's going to be a successful product." (Source: foxnews.com)

But for RIM, the best news is that North America's top three operators -- T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon -- say they plan to bring on board both BlackBerry 10 and RIM's new hardware.

On Wall Street, the response to this universal acceptance has accelerated RIM's stock price, which had declined an incredible 86 per cent during the last five years. It has now started to rebound. In fact, RIM's stock surged 13 per cent just on Friday, January 11, 2013.

Said Daily Finance's Anders Bylund: "Maybe there's life in this supposedly dead stock yet." (Source: dailyfinance.com)