After the completely terrible quarter and the delay of BlackBerry 10 devices, it's only natural that the previous rumors we've heard about RIM looking to spin off a division of the company or even partnering with Microsoft would bubble up again. According to Reuters, the company's board is under "mounting pressure" to do something more drastic than CEO Thorsten Heins' stay-the-course-to-BB10 plan. One of the options on the table is reportedly to sell off the software services division that runs the back-end for BlackBerry smartphones with an aim to make it work for any smartphone. That's rumored to have been the plan Jim Balsillie was pursuing before he abruptly left the company, but it had been assumed that plan was off the table.

Reuters' sources also suggest that Microsoft had approached RIM to try to get the company to switch to Windows Phone, but the board reportedly wanted to give Heins a chance to get BlackBerry 10 launched instead. That's not the first time we've heard Microsoft and RIM mentioned in the same breath, so there's probably some fire around that smoke as well.

That's a lot of rumor and innuendo to keep track of, so the short version is this: RIM is likely considering several very dire solutions to what is obviously a very dire situation.