According to an internal NOAA memo obtained by The Loop’s Jim Dalrymple, BlackBerry will officially be struck from the rolls of NOAA’s supported mobile devices on May 12 of this year. Joseph Klimavicz, NOAA’s Chief Information Officer said that new employees will begin receiving the iPhone 4 and the iPad 2, each running iOS 5 or higher. There is no word on whether employees will be allowed to supply their own devices.

This is another blow to RIM, which has been practically hemorrhaging market share to Android and iOS over the past several years. While BlackBerry once owned the mobile enterprise market, they have never managed to properly respond to the threat posed by the extremely popular iOS and Android devices.

Saunders also took issue with the claim that BlackBerry App World isn’t profitable. He argued that App World sees more paid downloads than the Android App Market, and that it sees 43% more downloads per app per day than Apple’s App Store. In fact, Saunders said, BlackBerry App World generates 40% more revenue than Google’s Android App Market, putting it solidly in second place behind Apple’s iOS App Store in terms of profitability.

While it may be true that BlackBerry App World is more profitable than Android, it is also true that the Android App Market has a significantly higher percentage of free apps than either App World or the iOS App Store, so Android may not be the best comparison. Also, even as RIM is bragging that App World is a more profitable than the Android App Market, they are also putting forth a great deal of effort to get Android developers working for them. The addition of RunTime to the BlackBerry 10 and PlayBook 2.0 operating systems is meant to provide an easy way for developers to port their Android apps to BlackBerry devices.

Now it looks like they’re about to suffer another blow. AppleInsider has apparently gotten hold of an internal memo detailing plans by energy giant Halliburton to transition from BlackBerry to iOS as its mobile business platform. According to the document, the company intends to expand its use of mobile technology in the coming months as it phases out BlackBerry and phases in the iPhone. The decision apparently comes after extensive research into the mobile platform options available – iOS, Android, and BlackBerry. The company concluded that iOS best suited Halliburton’s security and control needs. The company plans to make the transition to iOS products over the next two years.

The loss of such a large customer could do significant damage to the already struggling RIM. The company has made some efforts in recent months – including appointing a new CEO – but it remains to be seen whether it will be possible to right RIM’s ship, or whether the recent efforts are too little, too late.

Detective Rich Henson from the Nottinghamshire Police comments on the events and subsequent conviction of Lowe:

“Lowe broadcast his initial message to the 160 BlackBerry users he’d added to his contacts list and subsequently deleted it”

“Not only did we manage to gain access to Lowe’s BlackBerry Messenger messages, we were able to retrieve his deleted messages, which are also very difficult to recover due to rigorous security settings.”

Police caught onto Lowe after he texted the people involved encouraging them to rise up against the police:

“It is impossible to quantify the impact and effects of the messages he sent that night. It is clear, however, that this was an irresponsible and criminal act at a time when people were rising up against the police on a national scale.”

There has been over 140 arrests related to the riot and so far, there’s been almost 90 convictions.

Henson adds:

“Let this be a clear warning to those criminals out there who think they are safe using BlackBerrys to orchestrate or commit crime. There is no where to hide.”

Apple also grew in market share during the last quarter, and by nearly as much. In September Apple had 27.4% of the smartphone market. Apple’s market share grew 2.2%, hitting 29.6% in December.

Of course, with Apple and Android getting a collective surge of nearly five percentage points, someone has to have lost out. Well, perhaps unsurprisingly, the big loser appears to have been RIM. Their BlackBerry platform went into the quarter with a market share of 18.9%. By December they had lost 2.9% – more than either Apple or Android gained – to bottom out at 16%. Meanwhile, Microsoft and Symbian suffered smaller drops, finishing December at 4.7% and 1.4% market share, respectively.

ComScore also collected data about mobile phone OEMs (original equipment manufacturers). Apple gained 2.2 percentage points and ended December with a market share of 12.4% of all mobile phones, not just smartphones. That leaves Apple in fourth place, after Samsung, LG, and Motorola. RIM maintained its fifth place position. Of the top five mobile phone manufacturers, Apple was the only OEM to actually gain market share during the September-December period. Samsung held steady at 25.3%, while LG, Motorola, and RIM all lost market share.

Finally, comScore looked at mobile content usage (i.e., activities other than making phone calls) across all mobile subscribers, not just smartphone users. The most popular activity by far is texting, with 74.3% of users saying they had used their phone to send text messages. The second most popular activity at 47.6% was downloading mobile apps, followed very closely by using their phone’s browser at 47.5%. Just over two thirds – 35.3% said they used their phone to access social networking sites or blogs, while 31.4% played games and 23.8% listened to music. All of these activities gained in popularity in December. Downloading apps saw the biggest jump in popularity at just over 5%.

[via comScore]

The above image was obtained by CrackBerry, and purports to be a photo of the BlackBerry London, the first “Superphone” to run the BlackBerry 10 operating system. The image doesn’t give many details about the phone. The information offered on the slide is extremely generic, and in fact tells us almost nothing about the device itself.

Assuming this is genuine, though, the BlackBerry London looks like a fairly solid entry in the smartphone market. As we reported yesterday it, along with PlayBooks running OS 2.0, will have access to Android apps that have been ported using RunTime, which has the potential to vastly expand the BlackBerry App World catalog.

There’s no word yet on when this phone might hit the market – again, assuming the photo isn’t a fake. RIM has said that the BlackBerry 10 would release sometime this year. Stay tuned for more news as it becomes available.

A post on the BlackBerry developer’s blog today lists several requirements for developers who want to bring their apps to BlackBerry devices. Among other things, they must remove all references to Android from both the application and its description, as well as any links to the Android Market. Though apps may be submitted at any time, the post also requests that as many apps as possible be submitted by February 6th so that they can be in the BlackBerry App World storefront by the time PlayBook 2.0 launches.

What do you think about Android apps coming to BlackBerry devices? Let us know in the comments.

RIM’s new marketing strategy for BlackBerry, announced via their blog, is The Bold Team, a group of super heroes that personify BlackBerry users.

Whether it’s the determination to run in your first marathon or earn a degree, you proved to us that for you, 2012 is about one thing – boldly seizing opportunities to pursue your dreams. More than this, four bold characters emerged from your #BeBold resolutions, and it’s clear to us that all are bravely stepping out of 2011 and into a 2012 filled with unlimited possibilities. Which are you?

A full rundown of the new “heroes” include Gogo Girl who is “saving the day with a brilliant strategy, a smile or a spatula;” Max Stone who is “able to jump out of a plane and land on a moving speedboat;” and Justin Steele who is “outgoing and kind.” Obviously saving the best for last is Trudy Foreal who is “not afraid to call it as she sees it.”

The company is having users tweet their stories with #BeBold. As expected, the Twitterverse hates this new marketing ploy more than I do and is showing it in marvelous form today.

What do you think of RIM’s new marketing strategy? Is it a good idea? Or is just really embarrassing? Let us know in the comments.

Consumer Intelligence Research Partners has released a study today that sheds some light on the issue. According to their data, 18% of those who bought the iPhone 4S at its launch in October were switching from other smartphone platforms like BlackBerry and Android. For October, November, and December 2011 combined, that number jumps to 36%.

Additionally, CIRP’s data showed that the iPhone has had a significant impact on the market shares of the major carriers. Three of the four major carriers – AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint – carry the iPhone. The fourth, T-Mobile, does not. CIRP’s data showed that T-Mobile lost market share during the first three months of the iPhone 4S’s availability, while the other three maintained their market share.

Interestingly, the fact that 36% of new iPhone buyers were coming from other platforms seems not to have had much of an impact on those other platforms’ market share. According to an analysis released by StatCounter at the end of 2011, BlackBerry and Android continued fairly steadily in their respective trends throughout the last quarter of 2011. BlackBerry declined steadily throughout 2011, and showed no change in the rate of decline during the three months the iPhone 4S was available. Android, meanwhile, continued its steady climb throughout the year (even surpassing the iPhone in late summer), though it did show a very slight levelling off in October, around the time of the iPhone 4S’s launch.

[Hat tip, AppleInsider]

That may be about to change for BlackBerry, though. In an interview with the Globe and Mail, newly-minted RIM President and CEO Thorsten Heins spoke of numerous changes coming to the BlackBerry platform. One of those changes was a potential willingness to license the forthcoming BlackBerry 10 operating system to other handset manufacturers. While he insisted that BlackBerry would remain an integrated hardware-software platform, he also said that he would be willing to entertain licensing offers from other manufacturers if the offers made good strategic sense for RIM.

BlackBerry 10, which is set to release sometime this year, is the next major iteration of the BlackBerry mobile operating system. It employs technology obtained by RIM in their purchase of QNX Software Systems, a company acquired by RIM in 2010. The software was originally named BBX until a lawsuit by BASIS Software forced them to abandon the name in favor of BlackBerry 10.