Comments from Thorsten Heins, CEO of troubled BlackBerry-maker RIM, sparked speculation about the future of the company, although in fact he only reiterated that it is reviewing its options – which was officially acknowledged early last year.

According to an interview with Die Welt, the executive mooted several possibilities, including licensing the BlackBerry 10 platform to other vendors, or moving away from hardware production, although he also noted that there is “no rush to decide”.

The speculation comes shortly before RIM unveils its long-anticipated BlackBerry 10 devices, and indeed the company has seen some positive sentiment from the market ahead of this.

From RIM’s perspective, offering attractive BlackBerry 10 devices is vital wherever it decides its future lies – the CEO described this as a “decisive moment”.

It needs to prove that BlackBerry 10 is a viable rival to the established market leaders such as Android, iOS and Microsoft’s fledgling Windows Phone, and that there is still customer demand for BlackBerry devices.

As Heins noted in the interview, RIM has managed to organise its transition relatively effectively – although unsurprisingly it has not been without downside.

While the BlackBerry subscriber base has remained steady over the last 12 months, there has been concern that this has been achieved by adding low-end subscribers in emerging markets to replace more lucrative high-end customers.

With the company also offering an aging device portfolio powered by the legacy BlackBerry 7.1 platform, the executive noted that the fact it lost one million subscribers in the last quarter was “not so bad” – although also not a positive.

And although its financials have also been uninspiring, the company has managed its resources well, and by this metric is in a solid position – at least for the short term.

In recent months, RIM has been working hard to encourage developers to create apps for BlackBerry 10, with claims it is looking to launch with around 70,000 apps available.

It has also begun its efforts to drive support among its enterprise customer base, which has long been core to the company’s success – although the growth of the “bring your own device” segment has seen it losing share to its rivals.