After months of losing ground to Google and Apple, Blackberry maker Research in Motion kicked off its annual conference by giving out thousands of prototype mobile phones running its brand new operating system, Blackberry 10. This is based on the QNX operating system that powers its Playbook tablet.

RIM has found itself in a dire position – Samsung enjoys a 29.1 per cent global market share in smartphone sales, while Apple has a generous 24.2 slice. Will Blackberry 10 be a worthy challenger that will topple Android and iOS, or at least put a dent in their leadership?

Blackberry 10 introduces a number of significant changes. First of all, it seems that the Canadian company will be embracing touch-screen technology – this will, of course, add some speed to user interaction. Yet RIM’s main challenge is to make way into the app market – unless it gets developers excited about the new platform, there’s no way the users themselves will get excited about its new phones. Hence its move to give away thousands of prototype mobile phones, in a bid to encourage developers to create software for the platform.

RIM is also trying to make developing apps easier by promoting user-friendly toolkits such as Cascades. RIM also says it is already working with a number of partners – including Wikitude, Poynt, Gameloft and Endomondo, to make sure enough apps are available once the new phones are launched.

But joining in the apps race is, however, a pretty mighty task as both Apple, which has more than 500,000 apps, and Google, with more than 450,000 apps available from its Google Play store, have a significant advantage.

Is this a lot, but still too late? We’ll just have to wait and see.