The Waterloo, Canadian-based maker of the BlackBerry smartphone, Research In Motion (RIM), is having final negotiations with top-level officials from the government of India in an attempt to satisfy security concerns that would avoid a nation wide ban of the BlackBerry.

In the most recent developments today, Research In Motion offered the government of India to organize and lead an industry wide forum on mobile communications and privacy, and their relationship with national security.

The government of India argues the BlackBerry platform is the only communication medium in the country that currently cannot be monitored, and that terrorists and criminals could use the messaging phone to freely communicate securely without worrying about government monitoring.

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Research In Motion (RIM) Corp., the Ontario-based maker of the BlackBerry smartphone, has reached an agreement with the Saudi government, preventing the banning of core BlackBerry features.

The Saudi government claimed core BlackBerry features present sufficient risk to national security that it would have been forced to disable the key features for all users in the country, including for all foreigners traveling to the Kingdom.

The features in question include both BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS) and BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES), including BlackBerry Messenger, email, and browsing.

The Saudi’s claimed (including many more nations like India, and the United Arab Emirates, among others) that the platform is far too secure where government officials are not able to monitor BlackBerry data.

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The Research In Motion stock (TSE:RIM) is surging in past mid-day trading as the company confirmed today it would launch a new BlackBerry application store in China.

BlackBerry smartphones already available in China through China Telecom, but the application store comes as the company tries to make its devices more consumer friendly as competing products such as the iPhone from Apple become more enterprise capable.

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A new SEC filing by Research In Motion (RIM), the maker of the popular BlackBerry smartphone, shows sales figures for the latest quarter segmented by geographic areas.

RIM previously reported an aggregate sales number, reporting aggregate sales were up just over 10-percent in the quarter.

However, according to the SEC filing, most of that growth came from the United States, with other key international markets reporting a decrease in sales over the same period last year.

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The market research firm IDC published a report today on global smartphone sales, indicating the market grew 56.7-percent in Q1 2010 with 54.7-million units shipped, compared to 34.9-million units shipped in the same period last year.

The smartphone market also grew by a record 38-percent in the final quarter of 2009 year-over-year.

Most notably, Apple was able to double its iPhone sales over the same period last year, as the company introduced the iPhone in emerging high-growth markets such as China.

According to the report, Apple sold 8.8-million iPhone devices, putting the company in the third top spot of global mobile vendors.

Apple is expected to unveil its latest iPhone model sometime this June, with the more redefined OS 4 that will bring many new features including multi-tasking, enhanced e-mail and personal information management, among other key enhancements.

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The BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion (RIM) today has finally fixed a flaw that left North American users without BlackBerry Messenger, sporadic email delivery, and no web browsing yesterday and late into the morning today.

This interruption of service marks the second BlackBerry service outage in less than a week, the last one occurring on December 17.

The BlackBerry Curve was the top selling smartphone in the United States in the first quarter of 2009, giving RIM a 50-percent share of the total smartphone market in the U.S.

RIM most recently posted strong Q3 2009 earnings and added 4.4 million new subscribers in the quarter, bringing the total BlackBerry user-base worldwide to 36 million.

RIM blamed a flaw in an updated version of the BlackBerry Messenger app for causing the outage. The company is encouraging users to upgrade to the latest version 5.0.0.57 of BlackBerry Messenger. Just remember to upgrade first.

RIM spokeswoman Rachel Colley confirmed today in an email that the problem has been fixed.

A service interruption occurred Tuesday that affected BlackBerry customers in the Americas. Message delivery was delayed or intermittent during the service interruption. Phone service and SMS services on BlackBerry smartphones were unaffected. Root cause is currently under review, but based on preliminary analysis, it currently appears that the issue stemmed from a flaw in two recently released versions of BlackBerry Messenger (versions 5.0.0.55 and 5.0.0.56) that caused an unanticipated database issue within the BlackBerry infrastructure. RIM has taken corrective action to restore service.

The popular BlackBerry maker, Research In Motion (RIM), today released third quarter financial earnings that beat Wall Street expectations, sending the RIM stock surging up by about 12-percent in after hours to $70.76 (as at 5:36pm EST), up from the $63.46 market-close.

Q3 (ended November 28) earnings were $3.92 billion ($1.10 per diluted share), while Wall Street was expected $1.04 per share and up to $3.79 billion in total revenue.

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BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion Inc. (RIM) has officially unveiled the new BlackBerry Storm 2, the successor of RIM’s very first touch-screen based device.

It is expected RIM will be announcing availability in the coming days. The phone should head to Verizon first in the U.S. and later in the Europe from Vodafone.

The Storm 2 will feature basic enhancements compared to the first-generation Storm. RIM has enhanced the SureType text-entry to only electronic-based, and there will now be no moving parts. The memory has also been doubled to 256MB of flash memory, and there is now 2GB of on board storage. The device features GPS, a 3.2MP camera, and now includes 802.11 b/g WiFi.

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Update: The syncing issues seem to be all resolved in the latest release.

BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion (RIM), has just released its much anticipated BlackBerry Desktop Manager software for Mac users.

Desktop Manager for Mac allows users to sync their contacts, calendar, notes, and tasks, manage applications on their device, and now it also allows Mac users to install the BlackBerry operating system (previously the process could only be done with a PC). You can also sync your iTunes playlist with your BlackBerry.

If you have Pocket Sync Manager installed, it will no longer work if you install Desktop Manager, unless you uninstall Desktop Manager again.

Trying out the program myself, I was able to successfully uninstall an app, but as of right now, my contacts have disappeared from my BlackBerry following an unsuccessful sync.

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RIM Co-Founder & CEO Jim Balsillie

Waterloo-based BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM), is now the world’s fastest-growing company according to a report released by Fortune.

The report noted RIM had an average sales growth of 77% over the last three years, with average EPS growing at 84 percent during the same period.

The tremendous growth can be attributed to RIM diversifying into the consumer market space. RIM now holds over 20% of the total smartphone market in Q1 2009, according to the report. The BlackBerry Curve device was

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