Yesterday was a rough day for RIM. The company announced 5,000 job cuts and yet another delay for it’s BlackBerry 10 handsets, pushing them back to 2013. According to Reuters, RIM’s board is under significant pressure in order to alleviate the floundering company’s problems, which could lead to forming a partnership with Microsoft similar to what Nokia forged in 2010 when the Finnish handset maker found itself in the same position.

If this partnership were to come about, that would mean future BlackBerry devices would ship with Windows Phone 8. According to Reuter’s sources, Steve Ballmer has approached RIM in an effort to forge a partnership similar to that of Nokia. What do you think? If RIM were to become a hardware manufacturer only and drop BlackBerry 10 in favor of Windows Phone 8, would you consider one of their devices over Nokia? Here’s the leaked BlackBerry 10 device from earlier this year. In my opinion, it looks oddly familiar to that Windows Phone Surface render we showed you a few days ago.