Bloomberg is reporting that BlackBerry maker, Research In Motion, will indeed be licensing BlackBerry 10.

RIM has already decided to delay the launch of its next generation of smartphones and software until next year, and now it appears the company is going to go one step further and license BlackBerry 10.

Thorsten Heins, who has begun to carry a BlackBerry 10 smartphone for his own use, said in an interview at Bloomberg’s headquarters in New York:

QNX [the underlying software for the new operating system] is already licensed across the automotive sector — we could do that with BB10 if we chose to. The platform can be licensed.

If RIM actually does find a way to license BlackBerry 10 to another smartphone manufacturer, this would be the first time in the company’s history that another company would be able to make a smartphone with a BlackBerry operating system.

Besides that little experiment with BlackBerry Connect and BlackBerry Application Suite that really didn’t materialise a number of years back.

BlackBerry 10 will have an improved Internet browser as well as the ability to jump between applications while they continue running as just some of the new features.

It’s also RIM’s attempt to regain market share from Apple and Google. Licensing the new software to other manufacturers may help improve investors’ confidence in the operating system, but the question is: would they want to?

The answer to that question is anyone’s guess, but look at this: RIM’s stock jumped as much as 13 per cent on August 8 after Jefferies and Co speculated that Samsung might license the new BlackBerry software.

This led to six straight days of gains before the stock eventually settled down a little.

Heins remains optimistic:

We’re here to win. We’re not here to fight for third or fourth place. Smartphones are a part of our business, but we’re looking way beyond this.

Overall, since 2008, the stock has lost about 95 per cent of its value.

Just last month, global BlackBerry sales tumbled 43 per cent when RIM revealed its latest sales figures. They’re also still laying off thousands of employees.

[Source: Bloomberg]