RIM Shares Rise After Yesterday's BlackBerry Jam

Yesterday, RIM CEO Thorsten Heins took the stage in San Jose to talk about some of the upcoming features in BlackBerry 10. Though RIM is taking its sweet time bringing BlackBerry 10 to market, Heins did have some good news to report, telling the audience that BlackBerry users have grown to 80 million, up from 78 million from previous quarter. In addition to delivering that glimmer of hope for the struggling company, Heins also showed off a handful of new features that will be present in BlackBerry 10, and that address seems to be sitting well with investors today.

RIM's stock is trading up today, breaking the $7 mark earlier for a gain of about 7%. Of course, it fluctuated throughout the remainder of the day, resting at $7.00 even (6.06% gain) by the time the closing bell signaled the end of the regular trading day on Wall Street. That is definitely good news for RIM, which has been losing market share at a pretty steady rate ever since iOS and Android took over the smartphone scene.

RIM is counting on BlackBerry 10 to pull it out of this rut, with Heins saying yesterday that the new mobile OS has a shot at becoming a solid third behind iOS and Android. BlackBerry recently fell below 5% market share, which is a far cry from where it was at when BlackBerry mania was in full swing. In all, RIM's stock has fallen 90% in value from its peak, which signals that some major changes need to happen before users leave the company behind entirely and it goes the way of the dinosaurs.

Make no mistake, BlackBerry 10 certainly looks like a solid OS, but the question on everyone's mind is whether it will be a strong enough contender to bring RIM back from the brink. We'll find out the answer to that question soon enough, but for now, we'll just let the executives at RIM revel in today's victories. Check out or story timeline below for more posts on RIM and BlackBerry 10.

[via NBC Market Day]