Twitter, April Fools Day was yesterday.

…yet.

The writing is so very obviously on the wall here. And not just the consumer market, eventually all markets. If RIM exists in 5 years, I’d bet it’s solely in services and/or some suite of apps like BBM. If.

Peter Kafka reporting on new RIM CEO Thorsten Heins’ call with analysts this morning:

And the new tech that the company has in the pipeline — a revised version of its PlayBook tablet, and a new operating system due out in the fall — are great. You’ll see: “I don’t think there is a drastic change needed.”

RIM is still awash in revenue, so there is undoubtedly push-back to really shaking stuff up. But this sure sounds like RIM’s new CEO fails to see the writing on the wall, just as his predecessors clearly did.

And that shouldn’t be surprising. As Kafka notes, Heins has been RIM’s COO for the past four years. He’s the guy former co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis were grooming to take their place one day. That day came sooner than they expected, but all parties seem to be failing to acknowledge why.

RIM needs to quit dicking around with the PlayBook and focus on either what they’re good at (enterprise-focused smartphones) or something entirely new that blows away the market the way the first BlackBerrys did. To be honest, they should probably be doing both if they want to exist in 5 years. 

The most troubling thing Heins said today:

Q: Please go into detail: What are your priorities for the next 100 days?

Heins: We need to get better at market communications.

Yeah, that’s the ticket.

My review of the BlackBerry PlayBook. It’s all in there, overall a valiant effort. But the key question: does it compare to the iPad? 

No.

But I will say this — at least they have a goddamn way to take screenshots right on the device without having to install some SDK bullshit and hook your device to your machine.

You hear that, Android?

I got to play with a Playbook briefly a couple weeks ago. It looked pretty nice and seemed to run smoothly. But the RIM guy must have said “Flash” 200 times. I simply don’t care if it runs Flash or not.

Others might, but even then, it’s probably item 20 on the list of important things. If that’s going to be their main selling point, they’re in trouble. And when the Flash was shown in action, guess what, it looked jittery. No surprise there.

Speaking of important things on a tablet — number one: apps. Running Android apps might be a good idea — if they weren’t Android 2.3 apps which aren’t tailored for tablets in any way, shape, or form. Literally.

But the most important point is the ending of Krazit’s article. 

Perhaps the old-school PC company, Microsoft, is finally ready to make an honest man or woman out of all the rumormongers predicting a Microsoft-RIM merger for years. 

Phase one of Microsoft’s catch-up in mobile plan was Windows Phone. Phase two was the Nokia partnership. Phase three may well be an acquisition of RIM. 

And Microsoft is actually in a position to do it (from a regulatory perspective) because Apple and Google are utterly dominating the space.

Original headline?

RIM seen unveiling “iPhone killer” next week

Yep, we’re still doing those, apparently.