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.

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.

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.

According to the announcement, Heins was recommended to the board by Lazaridis and Balsillie as part of a succession plan that they proposed to the board. The board voted unanimously to accept the plan and appoint Heins. As part of the succession Balsillie remains a member of RIM’s board of directors and a major shareholder. He expressed his enthusiasm at the change of leadership and said that Heins and the current management team “will have my full support.”

Lazaridis will become the Vice Chair of RIM’s board of directors, and chair of the board’s new Innovation Committee. Lazaridis also expressed enthusiasm at the move, saying that he felt Heins had shown “the right mix of leadership, relevant industry experience and skills to take the company forward.” He is so confident, in fact, that he also stated his plans to purchase another $50 million in RIM stock.

Following a 23-year tenure at Siemens Communications Heins, a native of Germany, went to work at RIM in 2007 as Senior Vice President for Hardware Engineering. In 2011 he became Chief Operating Officer for Product and Sales.

As part of the announcement, RIM posted a series of videos featuring Heins talking about RIM. Here are some of them:

Times have been hard for RIM lately. The company has been steadily losing market share to Android and iOS devices, and a string of underperforming products and poor business decisions have taken the situation from bad to worse. There have even been rumors that the company was looking to sell. While Heins’s appointment argues against such a sale, the fact remains that RIM remains in a tough spot. It will be interesting to see whether a new CEO can right RIM’s troubled ship. While the company seems enthusiastic about the change, reactions on Twitter and elsewhere were somewhat cooler:

What do you think? Will a new CEO be able to get RIM back on track? Sound off in the comments.

Now it looks like RIM may be getting desperate. Citing “trusted sources,” BGR is reporting that the company is shopping around for buyers. Whether they plan to sell off individual divisions or the entire company is apparently still up in the air at this point. If BGR’s sources are to be believed, the company is ready to sell whatever they can to whoever will buy. The asking price for the whole company would probably be in the $10-12 billion range, though whether anyone would be willing to pay that is unclear. Samsung and HTC have been floated as potential buyers, but there is little solid information at this point.

RIM unveiled updates to their BlackBerry and PlayBook operating systems at CES last week to generally positive reviews. Nevertheless there have been increasing signs in recent months that BlackBerry was on the way out. In November they announced BlackBerry Mobile Fusion, which would allow BlackBerry’s vaunted security and IT management platform to work with iOS and Android devices. The move was seen by many as RIM’s acknowledgement that BlackBerry had lost hegemony in the business world. Then, late last month, there was another report from inside RIM claiming that the launch of the much anticipated BlackBerry 10 phone was being delayed because RIM couldn’t get a decently functional prototype of the device.

All in all, it looks like we may be moving quickly toward the last days of RIM, at least in its current form. Whether the company is sold off piecemeal or all at once, there are certainly big changes on the horizon.