“Research in Motion said on Thursday that a new line of BlackBerry smartphones that it hoped would turn around its flagging fortunes will not come to market until late next year,” Ian Austen reports for The New York Times. “It was the latest, and perhaps most significant, setback in a string of product delays and missteps from the company.”

“The phones, which the company had been expected to start selling early next year, will replace RIM’s aging operating system with a new one known as BlackBerry 10. The company said the change would give them performance and capabilities more like Apple’s iPhone,” Austen reports. “The phones are widely seen as RIM’s last hope for reversing the drastic decline of the BlackBerry in the United States. BlackBerrys accounted for just 9 percent of the United States’ smartphone market in the third quarter of this year, compared with 24 percent during the same period a year ago, according to market research firm Canalys.”

Austen reports, “Research in Motion’s third quarter net income fell 71 percent, hurt by giveaway pricing for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet and costs related to a global service interruption in October.”

Read more in the full article here.