Taylor Martin is starting to get bored with Research In Motion. So much so, in fact, that he’s having trouble getting excited about anything that the company does these days. In truth, it is becoming harder and harder to keep rooting for the underdog, and do it with any sort of conviction. It’s hard to see the company in the situation they are in now, especially weeks after the announcement that BlackBerry 10 would be delayed until 2013. (Made worse by all those jobs getting cut, too.) It would seem that if RIM didn’t have bad luck, they wouldn’t have any luck at all at this point.

The end of 2012 was supposed to be the turning point for RIM. It was supposed to be the time that all RIM fans were proven right, and vindicated for waiting. For sticking around. But now fans have to keep waiting, and now instead of paying attention to only RIM-related announcements at the end of the year, they’ll get inundated with new devices from Android manufacturers, Microsoft, and Apple’s new iPhone. Basically, everything else is getting new material, while RIM is stuck on last year’s script.

There are some who would say that RIM is done with. Those same people would point out that they don’t have anything new to announce at the end of 2012, and now there won’t be any new devices on shelves for people to buy (hopefully) until 2013. What’s worse, is that there’s a real possibility that RIM’s new handsets running BlackBerry 10 just don’t stand out against the competition. Old news, even if it’s new to RIM. Unfortunately, that won’t be enough to break out of the depths.

Sure, it’ll keep some BlackBerry owners around, but it won’t cause a migration to BlackBerry. Not like RIM needs. Or wants.

There’s a possibility that the end of this year is pretty exciting for anyone who watches the smartphone market. Yes, there’s a new iPhone coming, but it goes beyond that. We may see a handful of new Nexus devices announced. And then there’s Microsoft, with their brand new Windows Phone 8, and with a whole plethora of new hardware options for manufacturers to take advantage of. And it would be a shock if Android manufacturers like Samsung or HTC don’t have another high-end device to announce later this year, which should do quite a bit to adopt even more into the Android fold.

While everyone else is getting their time in the limelight, and rightfully so, RIM sinks further into the shadows. Because there’s one big difference between the rest of these companies and RIM, one thing that separates them so distinctly that it really does make a world of difference: release dates. With all of these other companies and their devices, we should be seeing the majority of them, if not all of them, released before 2013 comes around. That will certainly be the case for the Windows Phone-based devices, and obviously the new iPhone. I would imagine that most high-end Android devices that get announced later this year will also be on store shelves before we ring in the New Year.

Even if RIM takes some time to show off what they’re working on, it won’t stop the masses from going out and buying devices that are out now, as opposed to what is coming out later.

That is, unless RIM could really surprise everyone. Unless RIM’s designers could come up with something so worthwhile that people would look at the new Nexus devices, or the new iPhone or even the new Windows Phone 8 handsets and say, “You know what? I think I’ll wait for that BlackBerry device.” That’s all that RIM has at this point. They have to realize that they need to show something off, create something so fantastic, that it makes people want to wait, instead of buy. That’s a hard –maybe even impossible—thing to do.

So, Dear Reader, tell me something. How would you fix BlackBerry? I need answers from everyone here. The fans and non-fans. What would you include, or take away, or make sure happens for you to actually wait to buy a device from Research In Motion running BlackBerry 10, rather than getting a new Android, Windows Phone, or new iPhone? Or, if there’s nothing you would change, would you really let RIM slip away entirely? Let me know!