This BBDoodle masterpiece is finally complete! It tooks us a couple of weeks to get all of the actors cast in the BlackBerry Avengers, but we got it done. Last week we asked CrackBerry Nation who should get the roll of Nick Fury, and after a lot of debate it was RIM's VP of Developer Relations, Alec Saunders, who won the honor.  

So that's it... we can finally Assemble the BlackBerry Avengers! Look for us soon at a carrier store or BlackBerry 10 Jam near you!

Coming Soon... The BlackBerry Avengers starring:

• BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins as Thor
• CrackBerry Kevin as The Hulk
• Bla1ze as Iron Man
• Adam Zeis as Captain America
• Michelle Haag as Black Widow
• QNX Founder Dan Dodge as Hawkeye
• RIM's VP of Developer Relations Alec Saunders as Nick Fury

Last week when we posted version 1.0 of the BlackBerry Avengers, we had Hawkeye taking the photo and out of frame. This week he's in with the rest of the BBAvengers... played by QNX Founder and RIM's lead BlackBerry 10 software architect, Dan Dodge. Now we just need to figure out who to add as Nick Fury into next week's version... leave your suggestions in the comments!

Coming Soon... The BlackBerry Avengers starring:

• BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins as Thor
• CrackBerry Kevin as The Hulk
• Bla1ze as Iron Man
• Adam Zeis as Captain America
• Michelle Haag as Black Widow
• QNX Founder Dan Dodge as Hawkeye
• Nick Fury... TBA!

Coming Soon... The BlackBerry Avengers starring:

• BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins as Thor
• CrackBerry Kevin as The Hulk
• Bla1ze as Iron Man
• Adam Zeis as Captain America
• Michelle Haag as Black Widow
• QNX Founder Dan Dodge as Hawkeye (he's taking the photo!)

BBDoodle is our weekly series of fun BlackBerry-related illustrations...

We're pretty pumped for the "Ask RIM Anything You Want Session". What are YOU most looking forward to from BlackBerry World? If you'll be there, let us know what you're looking forward to most, and if you aren't able to attend, what are you hoping RIM will announce/show off/talk about? Let us know in the comments!

If you follow me on twitter, you may have caught my tweet from yesterday morning that said:

Just woke up from an awesome dream. I hope in my life the day comes where I can re-watch them in video after I wake up. 

As dreams tend to be, my awesome dream yesterday was a bit of a mashup. My weekend was spent reading The Hunger Games and constantly thinking about CrackBerry.  In my dream I was battling it out against a bunch of iZombies w/ my BlackBerry 10 powered BlackBerry Blade in a fight to the death. Seriously, I can't make this stuff up (apologies go to all the iZombies I decapitated).

Back to reality, I honestly can't wait for BlackBerry 10 phones; I believe that if done right, this could be the first mobile phone that offers no compromises. Back in 2009 I wrote my theory on CrackBerry Kevin's Smartphone Hierarchy of Needs. If you have never read it, go read it now. My basic conclusion back then was that if you truly wanted a no compromise mobile experience that you would need to carry two phones with you: a BlackBerry - as it's the ultimate solution for communication and security - and another device -- such as in iPhone, or now a tablet -- for the best app and game experience. 

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BBDoodle is our weekly series of fun BlackBerry-related illustrations...

Not all device ideas floating through Waterloo are good ones - while some designs like the BlackBerry P'9981 make it all the way to store shelves, others like the Ferrari PlayBook or even the BlackBerry Blade never see the light of day. In some cases that's definitely a good thing, or we may end up seeing something like the PintoBerry -- modeled after the classic Ford Pinto. I'm all for rocking a sweet Ferarri-inspired BlackBerry PlayBook or a Porsche Design BlackBerry P'9981, but as for any more custom car devices, I think I'm good until BlackBerry 10 :-)

BBDoodle is our weekly series of fun BlackBerry-related illustrations... 

With the release of Apple's iPhone 4S not too long ago and the new iPad just this past weekend, some could say that Apple has shown a lack of new features in their last few offerings. Sure, there will be more phones and tablets down the road -- but for now, it leaves an opening for BlackBerry to strike back with new innovation, features and hardware. The BlackBerry PlayBook continues to get better and we're all anxiously awaiting new BlackBerry 10 devices later this year. Here's to hoping RIM is ready to wow us with new devices in 2012. Now is the time to fight back!

TAT = Teasers Are Torture. Well, actually TAT = The Astonishing Tribe, the amazing UI design company which Research In Motion acquired back in December 2010. Based out of Malmo, Sweden, the TAT aka RIM Sweden team has been teasing torturing us for over a year now with amazing app and UI demos, the power of which will be put into the hands of developers when TAT's Cascades UI framework is released as part of the BlackBerry 10 Native Development Kit. We're guessing that will hit in a couple months... perhaps a BlackBerry World unveiling?

In the meantime, we do really LOVE the demos and the TAT team and the work they're doing (we hope they get a chuckle out of this). We're just excited and impatient and want all of it on our BlackBerry devices NAO! :)

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It's going to take great products and real effort for BlackBerry to win back the love in the USA. But I believe it will happen. Step 1 is of course building great products. Those are in development now.

We outlined Step 2 this week with our plan to build a more direct relationship with the media, Wall Street and consumers by setting up a BlackBerry USA division complete with its own President.

Step 3 is getting those great products to market. We'll see the first BlackBerry 10 phones hit this year, and hopefully through 2013 we'll see BlackBerry sales continue to rise with support coming from carriers and lots of happy customers. Hopefully we'll see some awesome BlackBerry advertising too.

And by 2014 we should be onto BlackBerry 11 (or maybe 12 or 13 or 14?!), and by then I'm betting the love for BlackBerry in the USA will be soo huge again that people will want to erect statues in honor of the awesomeness of BlackBerry. Or, at least make a modification to an existing one. ;) 

BBDoodle: RIM's New CEO Thorstein Heins rallies the RIM troops... "Lets Rock & Roll This!"

One of the most common bear arguments on RIM over the last couple of years has been that the BlackBerry brand would lose momentum in the US market. Unquestionably, this has proven to be true. ComScore's latest results show that RIM has 6.5% of the US mobile phone market. This is down sequentially from 7.1%. For comparison, Apple has 11.2% and Samsung dominates with 25.6%.

I will point out the obvious - these are not percentages of the smartphone market, they are percentages of the total mobile phone market. I don't really care to look at smartphone percentages because we're getting to the point where all phones are smart, and it's really about the death of the dumb phone nowadays.

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At CES 2012 we got to check out plenty of good stuff on the way from RIM, namely BlackBerry PlayBook 2.0. The update it due out in a few weeks and will bring along native email, contacts and calendar as well as some awesome new features like remote control support. After seeing all of it in action, I have a new found love for my PlayBook and can't wait for the update to hit the streets. PlayBook 2.0 - Better, stronger, faster! Ok maybe not so much faster as better .. but you get the idea (for those of you who are don't get it, check this out).