Amazon, a lovely suitor if ever there was one, went so far as to hire an investment bank to advise on a potential deal, but it did not make a formal offer, Reuters is reporting. The reason? RIM just wasn’t that into them.

RIM, said people familiar with the matter, would prefer to have co-captains Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie continue to man the helm and right the course of what appears to be a ship with a broken compass. The BlackBerry-maker is said to have also rejected advances from companies other than Amazon, and is not open to a sale or break-up of the company. AllThingsD is reporting that Microsoft and Nokia have toyed with the idea of a joint RIM take over.

“They have had approaches from folks who have wanted to have discussions,” a Wall Street banker told Reuters. “The issue is it is hard to find a value that makes sense with a falling knife.”

So RIM is in it to win it. Okay, that’s noble, and it’s a rally-time strategy we could get behind if the company would stop fumbling the ball. The PlayBook tablet has performed atrociously, for instance, and we learned last week that the release of BlackBerry 10 devices, RIM’s only real hail-mary opportunity, was pushed back. Now the new phones won’t see the light of day until late 2012 — an entire year away. Chances are we’ll see a new iPhone before then.

Things could get a lot worse before they get better. RIM reported profits of $265 million on $5.2 billion in revenue in the third quarter of 2011. For some perspective, that’s down $911 million from a year ago. And the co-CEO even admitted, “It may take some time to realize the benefits of these efforts and the platform transition that we are undertaking.”

Image via johncatral/Flickr

Google’s Android operating system is kicking ass and taking names in the mobile software market, and Apple’s iPhone is on the rise in the hardware category, according to newly released data from comScore.

One in ten mobile subscribers are iPhone owners (10.8 percent), according to comScore which surveyed 30,000 U.S. mobile subscribers. The iPhone nabbed more than a percent share of the phone manufacturers market form July to October, but still trails Samsung (25.5 percent), LG (20.6 percent) and Motorola (23.6 percent) when it comes to mobile handsets.

Google has no skin in the hardware game, but no matter. Android once again ranked number one in the smartphone platform market share category, and now commands almost half — 46.3 percent to be exact — of the entire market. Apple’s iOS is a distant second with 28.1 percent share, up 1 percent from July. RIM, meanwhile, continues to slide backward; it dropped from 21.7 to 17.2 percent share between July and October. And Windows Phone, which fell from 5.7 to 5.4 percent of the OS market, is not exactly a hit just yet.

Also, according to comScore, a larger percentage of mobile subscribers are texting (71.8 percent), using the browser (44 percent), downloading apps (43.6 percent) and accessing social networking sites (32.3 percent) on their devices.

[Image via svet/Flickr]

Best Buy confirmed to VentureBeat that it is not canceling the PlayBook; it’s just temporarily sold out.

After purchasing PlayBooks for the sale price of $199 on Best Buy’s website, customers reported having credit cards charged, with e-mails following soon after stating Best Buy was not going to deliver the tablet. Some said inventory issues were blamed, but others were given no explanation. While this looked like another bump on RIM’s road to recovery, it could be a positive for the company. After all, having its Best Buy inventory wiped out online and in-store is a sign that people actually want to buy RIM’s tablet.

The mobile company has been losing steam for some time now, amplified by recent outages to its Blackberry service, a push back of updates to its PlayBook operating system and now the steep PlayBook holiday sale price, $300 off the regular price of $499. The company’s second quarter revenue was down ten percent year over year. PlayBook sales topped out at 200,000 shipped units, half of the 400,000 units expected. The price drop seems to have helped the tablet, however, making it more competitive with eReaders on the market, instead of the iPad and its Android competitors.

One customer detailed his experience on Best Buy’s customer forum. The person ordered a PlayBook to be picked up at a local Best Buy. The next day, he received an e-mail saying the store did not have any PlayBooks in stock, but he could call the general Best Buy number to check availability in other stores and receive free shipping on the tablet. He decided to wait for the PlayBook to come back in stock online and when it did that day, he placed a second order. The next day Best Buy sent him a second e-mail saying there was “a change to the status of your order,” and his credit card would be credited.

To figure out what was going on, he called customer service, who said it was a fraud issue and sent him to the fraud department. The fraud department didn’t know why his order had been rescinded and stated that this was not a fraud issue. The customer service representative, which he returned to, said it was a stock availability issue.

Electronista reported calling a Best Buy which confirmed canceling all shipments.

It’s wouldn’t be surprising if Best Buy did want to strip its shelves of the PlayBook, however. Others such as Sprint have already done so when it decided not to order RIM’s 4G version of the tablet in August.

In a statement to VentureBeat, RIM said:

“As in all markets around the world where BlackBerry is available, we cooperate with local telecommunications operators, law enforcement and regulatory officials. Similar to other technology providers in the UK we comply with The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and co-operate fully with the Home Office and UK police forces.”

The company declined to elaborate further, but the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act does allow police to make companies hand over information, so RIM could have to give up information it has on specific users.

BlackBerry Messenger, or BBM, is a free, private messaging service that only works on BlackBerry devices. What makes the network special—and easy to abuse—is that BBM messages are encrypted and untraceable to authorities. RIM has said in the past that it can’t unscramble messages sent via BBM, but the scope of the company’s capabilities in this area remain unclear.

Social networks such as Twitter and Facebook have also been blamed for amplifying users’ messages. Steve Kavanagh, the deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan police, said that “inflammatory” and “inaccurate” messages on Twitter were also to blame for the riots, according to the Guardian. “Social media and other methods have been used to organize these levels of greed and criminality,” Kavanagh said, according to the paper.

The riots in London have been raging since Saturday, and it was reported today that a 26-year-old man who was shot during the riots has died, becoming the first death attributed to the mass disorder. Police are expecting more disturbances this evening.

The negative press toward BBM certainly doesn’t help RIM, which has struggled lately to keep consumers interested in its devices. The company just launched five new models of BlackBerry 7 devices, but many smartphone buyers in the U.S. and around the world have shown a preference for Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android devices.

I’d like to point out that although smartphone technology and social networks helped in coordinating the riots in London, these tools shouldn’t be blamed for actually causing the disorder. In the absence of BBM or Twitter, users could have used text messages or phone calls to coordinate.

RIM announced a new WebKit-based web browser that would compete directly with iPhone’s mobile Safari and Android’s web browser (both also use WebKit). Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis emphasized network efficiency in his keynote, and said that the new BlackBerry browser would make efficiency a priority as well. So we can expect the browser to be fast. Lazaridis also demonstrated that the new browser scored 100 percent on the Acid 3 test — which shows that it’s compliant with known web standards. He went on to say that the browser will hit BlackBerrys sometime this year.

As a traditionally e-mail-focused device, RIM has waited too long to improve the BlackBerry’s web browsing experience. A better browser would be key for the next iteration of its Storm smartphone — a direct competitor to other touchscreen smartphones — and will bring the rest of the BlackBerry line to the modern age of mobile web browsing.

Lazaridis also pushed “SuperApps” — which appears to be RIM’s spin on making its existing BlackBerry applications more functional via extensions and other applications. He showed off an extension that allowed BlackBerry users to tweet from their inbox, as well as an eBay app that syncs with your calendar and sends alerts to the inbox. We can expect further extensions for the inbox in the future, along with similar integration with other applications.

Finally, Lazaridis announced a free version of BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express — a simplified version of the BES server that many large businesses and institutions run to support BlackBerry e-mail. The BES Express server will run on existing mail servers and will come with free server and client licenses. A higher-end version will offer social network and video features.

In short, RIM didn’t announce anything truly revolutionary, but the unveiling of its WebKit browser is a sign that the company is keenly aware of the progress its mobile competitors are making.

[Photo via CrackBerry]

Here’s a sampling of their responses:

“I know what’s out there. I’ve been running free events in the Bay Area for more than five years now to try to bolster the mobile community when nothing else would. I’ve been working in the industry for about three times as long. I’ve developed for just about every platform, and I know the ecosystem extremely well. It’s not that I’m blind to everything else. I know everything else that’s out there, and because of that I’ve chosen to develop for iPhone. . . . Is the Nokia store supposed to challenge Apple? Or Microsoft supposed to? Or RIM? You know what folks, you had your chances. If you want to impress me, if you want me to start developing for your platforms again, get your houses in order. Once things change, once you get your stores developed, released, and proven as a good commercial channels to end users — then we can talk again. Until then we’re all just going to keep laughing at you and developing for iPhone.”
– Mike Rowehl on his blog This Is Mobility.

“The developer support on the iPhone side is years ahead of the other platforms both in terms of code objects, documentation, and quick constant positive feedback from friends and partners who all own the device. A national marketing campaign that emphasizes applications as the primary device feature doesn’t hurt either. Speaking as a developer and for fellow developers, iPhone development is fun and enjoyable development again. No one is going to do S60 or WindowsMobile dev for fun and those companies haven’t proven anyone will make money either. Big houses like Google, Facebook, Myspace,will all support all platforms. They can afford to. Smaller houses, not so much. Higher development costs + higher marketing risks. . . . Many of the iPhone apps are created by 1-3 person shops. Many part-time. They are supported an amazingly large number of books, blogs, screencasts, code samples, community gatherings, and apple developer resources covering the iPhone supported by a first-rate development environment with a toolkit that supports creating good looking apps easily (cheaply). Type “blackberry programming book” or “blackberry development”. Scant scant resources. Symbian/s60 too. . . . Nokia and Blackberry’s hardware and carrier focus has thus far led to lack of investment/interest/capability in software SDK design & developer support.”
– “Diesel McFadden” in response to my story.

“. . . Some people seem to write off the real enthusiasm that Apple has been able to stir up in the consumer and developer communities as some sort of cultish devotion that has no basis in reality. You know what? . . . It’s time to foster your own counter-cult or get out of the way.”
–“Jon Bell” in response to Rowehl’s post.

“As of now, Ovi is not a very developer-friendly place. Developers should get the VERY expensive ‘Java certified’ status for each app (a certificate that cost a decent list of devices could easily run up to $60k+). Nokia won’t do the app-verification process. Without doing anything to verify the app, Nokia takes a 30 percent cut on apps sold. Nokia is like the most tip-demanding waiter in a self service restaurant.”
– “Rapidmortal” in response to my story.

“. . . Developing for Symbian is extremely painful. The tool chain is cr*p on Windows platforms and even worse on Mac.”
–“Jim” in response to my story.

“RIM does not get it either. I tried to read their instructions on building html pages for the Blackberry, and I had to download a pdf file instead of reading it on an html page. To a developer that spells clueless.”
–“Dan Cornish” in response to my story.

“I would add Palm to the list as well. They had a great ecosystem before but flushed all of that down the toilet.”
–“Zen” in response to Rowehl’s post.

“I don’t blame developers for being leery of Palm. Palm screwed its Palm OS developers royally, beginning with its adoption of WinMo, and any serious businessperson would be foolish to forget that. Palm has suffered from bad management for an astonishingly long time – and WebOS doesn’t fundamentally change that fact.”
– “thegeniusfiles” in response to GigaOm’s coverage of the Skyhook Wireless study.

“I love how Apple sent a wake-up call to the mobile phone industry, and now they’re all scrambling to catch up! Reminds me of how Microsoft has for decades treated developers to garbage products because they didn’t have incentive to produce quality. I hope the desperate attempts at copying Apple fail for all these wanna-be players. And I hope the iPhone puts them out of business, with no hope for a bailout.”
–“Jim Bob” in response to Rowehl’s post.

Other respondents were a bit more hopeful:

“Whilst I don’t believe that you’re blinded by iPhone-lurve, it’s not the only game in town. There are profitable businesses running across other devices, and have been for years. iPhone has *absolutely* shown a better way and shaken up an industry for the better. I can’t wait to see what happens to the industry when the market leaders in mobile devices are as helpful as Apple have been. Whether that comes from Apple becoming the market leader, or the incumbents emulating them, I neither know nor care. It’s going to happen, and that’s a good thing for all of us.”
–“Tom Hume” in response to Rowehl’s post.

And Symbian offered up a response of its own:

“The frustration is well understood. I can wax poetic about the trials and tribulations you highlight and fill up many pints of beer with stories about the reasons why the barriers, control points, and technologies are set up this way in a Symbian and a Nokia marketplace. Rest assured, there have been many individuals involved that have been paying attention and have been acting on these needs well before the iPhone came around. It’s a big industry, and there are many strategies and initiatives to align and evolve. The Foundation we have formed and the asset distribution model we proactively endorse enables us to overcome many of those same barriers. You now get the addressable market, and many, not one object of desire. It took us a while to get here and now we have not only listened, but will continue to learn.”
– Lee M. Williams, executive director of the Symbian Foundation, in response to Rowehl’s post.

By the way, a recent study of location-based app developers by Skyhook Wireless (and covered here by GigaOm) shows that Google’s Android platform may actually be drawing more developer interest than the iPhone — although the numbers are a bit hard to interpret: 58 percent of developers surveyed expressed interest in developing for Android versus 40 percent “of non-iPhone developers” who said they were interested in porting their apps to the iPhone. Still, the survey bears out the lack of interest in Nokia’s Symbian. Only nine percent considered porting apps to that platform. RIM, Windows Mobile, and Palm registered 26 percent, 20 percent, and 8 percent interest respectively. But again, remember, the survey was limited to location-based app developers.