Last week the 2012 BlackBerry Roadmap slide deck was leaked. The leaked Roadmap document included a photo of the BlackBerry 10 smartphone. The image of the slide above contains some details of BlackBerry “London” also known as BlackBerry 10.

Over the last 20 years, Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis have been co-CEOs and co-chairmen at Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM). Now the company has promoted Thorsten Heins from the COO position to the President and CEO of RIM. The management shuffle happened in the midst of pressure from investors, but the company said it was not a reaction to the stock price. RIM’s investors have been disappointed with weakening sales at the company due to increased competition from Google and Apple.

Research In Motion has lost a ton of smartphone marketshare to Android and iOS. The company is also struggling to compete against the Apple iPad in the tablet market. This is why RIM co-founders Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie may give up their titles as co-chairmen according to sources with The Financial Post. Reportedly RIM is considering hiring Barbara Stymiest. Stymiest is currently an independent director that joined RIM’s board in 2007. Lazaridis and Balsillie would still have prominent roles on the board of directors if they were to be replaced by Stymiest.

Research In Motion is currently running a sale that dropped the cost of the BlackBerry PlayBook to $300 on their own store. Currently every version of the tablet costs only $300 including the 64GB option. This promotion is going until February 4th. If you want the 16GB model, it sells for about $243 on Amazon.com right now. RIM has been cutting down the cost of the PlayBook since October due to weak sales. A new generation of PlayBook tablets are expected to arrive this February. [Electronista]

As Research In Motion’s market share continues to decline, the company is banking on the BlackBerry 10 platform. However BlackBerry 10′s release has been pushed back to late next year. Executives have been blaming the delay on the latest release of a new chip, but it turns out that the real reason for the delay is because RIM has been unable to get their core email and messenger services on a new platform.

Looks like Amazon.com was not the only interested buyer in RIM. Microsoft and Nokia “flirted with the idea” of teaming up and buying RIM as well. The idea did not get any further than casual talks between senior executives at both companies. It may have even been a joke according to sources with the Wall Street Journal. I would not put it past Microsoft to considering how much they are investing in Windows Phone to gain traction. [WSJ]

Research In Motion Limited (TSE:RIM) has turned down take-over offers in the past, but one of the most interesting was from Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN). RIM knows that they have been having problems with maintaining a solid market share, but they prefer to get better as an independent. This past summer, Amazon.com hired an investment bank to review a potential merger with RIM. A formal offer was never made.

Research In Motion Limited (TSE:RIM) has announced their third quarter earnings earlier today. RIM reported $265 million in earnings, which is 51 cents per share for the quarter. This is down 71% from $911 million during the same quarter a year ago. The reason for the drop is because of the $485 million hit RIM took due to unsold PlayBook tablets.