A little bit of tech news for you sexy beasts this morning. It looks like Blackberry is fading fast and may not last much longer. With more and more companies and government agencies switching to iPhones and iPads, people just are interested  in what some are calling “old tech” anymore and it shows.

On Thursday, Research In Motion (RIM) announced 5,000 layoffs, a giant quarterly loss and — worst of all — another delay to its next BlackBerry system. Shares of the company plunged 18% Friday following the news. If that wasn’t bad enough the company’s BlackBerry 10 operating system — meant to be the linchpin of RIM’s turnaround — won’t hit the market until the first quarter of 2013. That news alone is so concerning that some critics don’t think the company will even survive long enough to launch the OS.

Amid the delays, RIM’s device shipments are declining rapidly. Smartphone shipments fell 41% over the year to 7.8 million last quarter.  The companies attempt to stay relevant has failed miserably as well, as the company shipped a paltry 260,000 PlayBook tablets. The same tablet that’s has received horrible reviews from almost everyone.  Compare that to Apple who sold over 3 million new iPads in just three days and you start to see the bigger picture.

So what happens now? Well, don’t worry you won’t wake up in a couple of days to find your blackberry doesn’t work. Although, at this point I don’t know why you still have one, but don’t feel too bad you’re not alone, the company still has 78 million subscribers and $2.2 billion in cash on hand.

Short of a miracle  there still isn’t much hope for RIM who certainly can’t continue  down it’s current path. Is the writing on the wall, so to speak? Yes. Most analyst agree that short of someone buying them out, blackberry may soon be a think of the past.

{source}