The U.S. Department of Justice has approved Google's acquisition of mobile-phone and tablet maker Motorola Mobility for about US$12.5 billion, following the European Commission's approval earlier in the day.

New Research In Motion CEO Thorsten Heins has a small window of opportunity to resuscitate the long-stumbling smartphone maker.

These are dark days for Research In Motion (RIM) and its BlackBerry brand... or at least dim ones.

Research in Motion is trying to woo developers by giving a free BlackBerry Playbook tablet to coders who port their Android application for its BlackBerry Tablet OS.

As Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie step down as co-CEOs at Research in Motion, the company is at a cross roads. Thorsten Heins steps into the CEO chair with many daunting obstacles ahead of him and RIM.

For the first time since its founding, Research in Motion has changed its top leadership, with a new president/CEO, a new board chairwoman and a new major investor who specializes in turnarounds. But can they save RIM?

RIM's new CEO, Thorsten Heins, wants the company to improve its product development while also becoming better at marketing, he said during a conference call on Monday.

Research In Motion's co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie have quit after a tumultuous period at the company, which saw intense competition, and a long services outage at the maker of the BlackBerry.

Mike Lazarus, a Sydney-based software design consultant, relies on his RIM BlackBerry daily to manage his contacts database, store important documents, and keep his information secure. "I use my mobile phone essentially as a mobile office," he says. "Nearly, everything I need to do in the office, I can do from my phone."

The BlackBerry PlayBook is available for pre-order, and will be on the street in a matter of weeks. I am not sure the RIM tablet will see much consumer success, but then consumers have never been RIM's primary market. Consumer tablets aside, the PlayBook has some unique features that make it an ideal tablet from a business or IT admin perspective.

Steve Jobs tried to dismiss iPad's tablet rivals as "copycats" at Wednesday's iPad 2 launch. But whether Steve likes it or not, the tablet wars are officially on. And this battle will be decided not only by consumers and gadget lovers seeking the latest and greatest slates, but also by businesses and corporate workers looking for the next game-changing productivity tool.

The BlackBerry PlayBook is nearing its final build with fully working tablets on public show at Mobile World Congress and one stand representative going so far as to refer to a PlayBook as "my own". All that's left, we're told, is battery optimisation - something that's actively being worked on.

It may seem like 2010 was the year of the tablet, but the reality is that 2010 was really just the year of the iPad with 15 million units sold and no real competitors for the Apple tablet. However, 2011 will be very different with a diverse variety of tablet options emerging--including some particularly relevant entries from major players.

With so much chatter about tablets this year, you might think that the handheld, rectangular devices being unveiled represent a significant innovation. The reality is that so much of what we're seeing is not a whole lot different than what we saw in previous years; these products offer only a few new twists. But those new twists could make the difference between tablets' remaining a niche item and their finally busting out to the mass market in a meaningful way.

Images and details of the BlackBerry Dakota--the impending flagship smartphone from Research In Motion (RIM)--have emerged. The Dakota is packed with features as RIM struggles desperately to regain lost ground and compete with the Apple iPhone and the rising Android invasion.

As recently as a year ago, many enterprises couldn't have imagined that the iPhone would now be second place in terms of security features that enterprises require, behind only the BlackBerry and ahead of Android and Microsoft's Windows Phone 7.