The New York Times has a fascinating profile of BlackBerry maker RIM today and the inherent challenge for them to keep pace in the post-iPhone smart phone market. For instance, while BlackBerry currently has a 40% market share to the iPhone's 17.4% share of the smart phone market; BlackBerry's focus on the business market forces them to take possible security faults far more seriously, and made them historically slower to adapt new features such as camera phone or a removable memory slot.

The solution for BlackBerry appears to be taking Apple on in their own terms; and while RIM co-chief Mike Lazaridis has a strong personal distaste for the iPhone and other touch-screen phones, saying “I couldn’t type on it and I still can’t type on it, and a lot of my friends can’t type on it”; he doesn't dismiss the possibility of RIM throwing it's hat into the touch-screen phone market.

But here's the more passage in The Times story that leads one to believe BlackBerry is looking to slay the Goliath sized iPhone:

"...two independent developers writing software for coming R.I.M. devices say that a touch-screen BlackBerry is in the works, and that R.I.M. engineers privately refer to it as the A.K. — for “Apple Killer.”

In my opinion however; that’s no sure sign RIM is coming forth with a touch-screen based iPhone killer. Most likely they’re still too early in the development process to decide if the project is ever going to be viewed by consumers.

Via