Not that long ago RIM’s BlackBerry was the most popular smartphone in the world. It’s a bit hard to believe now, with the immense popularity of the iPhone and Android devices, but at one time the BlackBerry was the king of the mobile world. I had several, and I loved them.

One of the features that made BlackBerry so popular, other than how well it handled email, was BlackBerry Messenger. In case you’re not familiar, BBM is a service that allows BlackBerry users to send direct messages, chat in real time and more. It works pretty much like Apple’s iMessage and FaceTime do in iOS or OS X.

Like iMessage and FaceTime, which are only available on Apple devices, BBM has always been BlackBerry-only. That is, until now.

RIM announced today that BBM will launch this Summer for Apple’s iPhone and for Android devices. The announcement came during the company’s BlackBerry Live conference, which is going on this week.

While I believe this will be a welcome development for some people still stuck in 2005, I need to ask this question: Who cares?

With other messaging services like iMessage, WhatsApp and Google’s upcoming Hangouts, this announcement isn’t going to make much of a difference to anyone. I don’t think it’s BBM on iOS or Android that’s going to bring people back to the BlackBerry in droves.

Sadly, at this point, I don’t think much of anything will.

iPhone users take note, your device is not the one that most people want anymore. How do we know? The Nielsen Company on Tuesday released the findings of its latest smartphone survey, which asked people planning to purchase new smartphones which platform they intended to use.

When asked that question between June and September of last year, 33% said iOS, 26% said Android and 13% said BlackBerry. When a new group was asked the same question between January and March of 2011, Android moved ahead of Apple’s iOS platform to become the most wanted.

In this new survey, 31% planned to purchase an Android phone, 30% planned to buy an iPhone and 11% were considering BlackBerry devices. So there you have it, the iPhone is dead.

Oh wait, its only 1%. I guess iPhone is probably going to be okay — at least for now.

RIM, maker of the popular BlackBerry line of smartphones, unveiled a brand-new tablet computer today they are dubbing ‘PlayBook.’ The company made the big announcement at their BlackbBerry DevCon, held at Moscone Center in San Francisco. Yes, the same venue Apple used to announce it’s iPad, among other products.

Quite a bold move and perhaps telling that RIM would choose to follow in Apple’s footsteps in such a manner. With RIM losing market share every quarter to the likes of Apple’s iPhone and the numerous popular Android smartphones out there, the company is facing pressure to innovate and regain a competitive advantage.

The newly-announced PlayBook will run on the new BlackBerry Tablet OS and is being positioned as the first ‘enterprise-ready’ tablet computer. Instead of using the recently-overhauled Blackberry OS 6, RIM decided to leverage their recent acquisition of QNX Software, who originally coded the new platform.

Features-wise, the PlayBook sports a 7″ screen (same as the Samsung Galaxy Tab – which we’ve covered extensively), a dual-core 1Ghz processor, front and rear HD cameras and is capable of multi-tasking and running flash-based applications. The PlayBook is uber thin and sexy, weighing in at 0.9 pounds and 9.7 mm thin.

A new report from comScore on U.S. Mobile Subscriber Market Share reveals some interesting statistics for both domestic cell- and smart-phone users. For fans of Google’s open-source Android Platform, the good news is that Android is continuing to grab ever-larger shares of the U.S. smartphone market. With the sheer number of outrageously great Android-based smartphones being released in 2010, it makes sense that devices based on Google’s OS would jump a healthy 4.0% over the previous period.

Over 234 million Americans age 13 and older are currently using mobile devices and comScore’s report ranked mobile equipment manufacturers (OEMs), smartphone operating system (OS) platforms in the U.S. according to their share of current mobile subscribers, and finally mobile content usage (how mobile device owners used their devices).

In terms of top manufacturers of mobile devices, manufacturer Samsung ranked as the top OEM with 22.4 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers, up one percentage point from the preceding three month period. LG ranked second with 21.5 percent share, followed by Motorola (21.2 percent share), RIM (8.7 percent share, up 0.5 percentage point) and Nokia (8.1 percent share).

Of all mobile device users, 49.1 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during the three months ending in May, up 8.1 percent from the corresponding February period. RIM, with their business-friendly Blackberry phones was the leading mobile smartphone platform in the U.S. with 41.7 percent share of U.S. smartphone subscribers, followed by Apple with 24.4 percent share and Microsoft with 13.2 percent.

Google saw significant growth during the period, up 4.0 percentage points to capture 13.0 percent of smartphone subscribers, while Palm rounded out the top five with 4.8 percent. Despite losing share to Google Android, most smartphone platforms continue to gain subscribers as the smartphone market overall continues to grow.

We’re all pretty big fans places and things where technology and Hollywood meet, so we felt it was pretty necessary to bring attention to this brand new mobile app from Best Buy. It’s called Movie Mode, and it’s a new way to enjoy films in the theaters, starting with this Friday’s release of Despicable Me.

The app syncs directly with the audio of the film, and will enhance the experience by giving you a little something to do during the end credits, aside from waiting for the expected post-credits sequence. From a Best Buy:

Available as a free download, Best Buy Movie Mode comes to life via “The Minionator,” created as part of an exclusive collaboration with Universal Pictures and tied to the July 9 release of its must-see RealD 3-D CGI feature “Despicable Me” produced by Chris Meledandri.

“The Minionator” is Movie Mode’s first film enhancing experience and offers fans a deeper connection to “Despicable Me” by translating for audiences what the film’s mischievous little yellow characters, the Minions, are saying. The app acts as a translator during the 3-D theatrical end credits for the special language of the Minions. The app will also translate the Minion language throughout the entire movie on Best Buy’s exclusive “Despicable Me” DVD released later this year.

Feeling left out of the Twitter fun as a user of a Blackberry device? Are you a bit jealous of your iPhone and Android using friends who get to have fun using the official Twitter app for their respective devices? If so, your day has finally come because the folks at Twitter have released the “official” app for Blackberry too.

Late last night, Twitter for BlackBerry smartphones started to roll out into a full launch. The application reportedly features many user requested bug fixes, tweaks and feature additions received from users during the app’s long Beta period.

Here’s what you can expect from this app:

“Go to User” – the ability to access any user’s profile from anywhere in the application using auto-complete functionality for followers.
Push Notifications for Direct Messages
Timeline Support
Following and Followers
Posting, Sending, Deleting , Replying and Retweeting Tweets
User/Saved/Keyword/Proximity Search
Tweet Photos/Links
Trending Topics
Seamless integration into core BlackBerry applications
URL Shortening
Auto-Update

It looks like Amazon isn’t going to simply wait around while Apple’s iPad and iPhone kill their eBook market. Instead, they are expanding beyond Apple and RIM and into the Android market by bringing their Kindle reader to the platform.

They already have an application for the iPhone, iPad and Blackberry and now they are planning to release one for Android powered smartphones. The Android app will look like its iPhone counterpart and include the the ability to read, preview, and purchase books from Amazon’s Kindle bookstore. You will also be able to navigate with a finger flick and sync reading progress across all supported platforms — which is a nice feature if, like me, you have several platforms.

The app is reportedly also compatible with popular Android handsets including the Moto DROID, Nexus One, HTC Droid Eris and HTC Incredible. Look for it in the Android Market soon. You can also sign up at Amazon to be notified when it becomes available.

Before we get started, congratulations are in order for QuakeHOLD I of Escondido California who is officially the one millionth user to sign up for a Foursquare account. It’s always a momentous occasion when an app or web service surpasses the one-million user threshold and I’m guessing that there will be some celebrating in Foursquare’s HQ this Friday as they savor this achievement. In fact, a tweet from the popular location-aware service implied exactly those sort of festivities are on tap:

“We’re closing in on 1 million users! Current count is 969,775. Looks like that’s we may have something to toast during Friday Happy Hour :)”

Exciting stuff indeed, but what I’m really enthused about is a novel way for brands and organizations to leverage Foursquare to help users unlock their immediate surroundings. With Foursquare, one of the sticking points is that unless your friends live in your immediate area, Foursquare doesn’t really offer a lot of regional intelligence.

Sure, you could check-in at nearby locations, maybe even become the mayor, but after a while, the allure of such things wore off and the general sentiment seemed to be, “So what?”

By way of its Inside BlackBerry blog, RIM has put the world on notice — BlackBerry Desktop Manager is coming to OS X in September. Yes, its finally happening after many, many years. I know you never thought it would happen but it is. We had our doubts also but glad they were finally put to rest.

Here’s some highlights of the new features:

* Sync your iTunes playlists, calendars, contacts, notes and tasks.

* Add/Remove applications.

* Update your device when new software becomes available.

* Backup and restore your device data with such features like automatically scheduled backups and optional encryption.

* Manage multiple devices.

When this software finally comes out at least Mac users finally won’t have to resort to less-than-perfect solutions to sync their Blackberry with their Mac. Make sure to check out www.blackberry.com/mac and sign up to get notified when the software is available, and stay tuned for more info on this software as we get closer to the release date.