RIM’s Road Ahead: Will BB10 Be Enough?

In just over a week, Research in Motion (NASDAQ:RIMM) won’t be able to survive on hype alone anymore. The company’s new line of BlackBerry 10 devices are set to come out at the end of this month, and once consumers have their hands on the devices, RIM will finally know whether the new OS and phones will be its saving grace, or whether they’ll turn out to be flops.

For the past several months, press, hype, trials, and hopes were feeding RIM, with BlackBerry 10 shaping up to play a pivotal role in the future of the company. While RIM was once a giant in the smartphone market — maybe even the only company in the market, as BlackBerry phones were arguably smarter than other standard phones before Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone launched — the company is now at the bottom of the barrel, with Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android OS accounting for the majority of smartphone sales, while Apple also tops smartphone makers along with Samsung and a few other big players.

It can’t be said that RIM hasn’t tried hard. Facing an uphill battle, the company made extensive efforts to garner appeal with professionals, corporations, and governments, as well as to come out with powerful devices that can match the competition’s performance and suit consumer sensibilities. The specs on the device appeared to match up with a lot of other current smartphones, and RIM has reached out to app developers to give the BlackBerry 10 the biggest selection of available apps at launch of any mobile operating system…