With BlackBerry 10 delayed until Q1 2013 and plenty of financial troubles, RIM considers desperate measures-- CEO Thorsten Heins tells The Telegraph the company is looking into licensing BB10 to 3rd party vendors.

"You could think about us building a reference system, and then basically licensing that reference design, have others build the hardware around it – either it’s a BlackBerry or it’s something else being built on the BlackBerry platform,” Heins says in an interview.

The reasoning behind the thoughts of BlackBerry licensing mainly involves economies of scale-- RIM admits it cannot compete against "the guys who crank out 60 handsets a year" even if it is in need of differentiation within the BlackBerry platform.

Licensing BB10 might also help RIM make lower-cost handsets aiming at growing emerging markets outside W. Europe and the US.

Either way, BB10 is make-or-break for RIM-- We will know either of which will happen once BB10 launches (on 2 flagship devices) sometime around Q1 2013.

Go "BlackBerry is Not in a Through"-- RIM CEO Thorsten Heins Interview (The Telegraph)