BlackBerry 10 delayed, devices to launch globally in Q1 2013

As part of its financial earnings report for Q1 2013, RIM has revealed that BlackBerry 10 has been delayed: the company will now globally launch BlackBerry 10 devices in the first quarter of 2013. RIM officially revealed the new OS back in May at BlackBerry World, and CEO Thorsten Heins said that the project had been underway for a year and a half — but it looks like RIM will need even more time to deliver, with Heins saying today on the company’s earnings call that the 2012 schedule is “no longer realistic.” Despite the setback, Heins says that BlackBerry 10 remains the company’s primary focus, and that the delay is “not related to the design or features of the software.”

The setback can’t be good news for the Waterloo-based handset maker which has seen a dramatic downturn in its global business in recent years, accompanied by an equally severe downsizing of its workforce. RIM’s new OS was supposed to arrive sometime later this year, with the company claiming previously that it needed a “highly integrated dual-core LTE platform” which it expected to be available by mid-2012.