The launch for the BlackBerry 10 operating system will take place on January 30, 2013, according to a statement issued by Research in Motion. The event will also include the formal debut of the first two BlackBerry 10 smartphones.

RIM first made mention in October 2011 of what was to become BlackBerry 10, an operating system that the company promised would fuse BlackBerry 7 with the QNX OS it acquired to power the BlackBerry PlayBook released in April 2011. Some of BB 10’s features were unveiled earlier this year in May and then a few more in September, including the ability to handle apps running in the background by swiping back and forth, “active frames” similar to Windows Phone’s live tiles that are actually minimized versions of running apps, and the BlackBerry Hub, which manages notifications and centralizes all received messages into one location.

BlackBerry and RIM have continued to lose market share as the company's developers have been hard at work on the new OS. Though it has been a long time in the works, many aspects of BB 10 revealed so far only serve to get RIM caught up with iOS 6 and Android 4.2; other features surpass the capabilities of the two bigger names, but are relatively minor in importance. Some compelling hardware couldn't hurt, but precious little information has been released about the devices that will launch the platform.

RIM has yet to announce a location for the event, or which carrier partners will help usher the company and its handsets into the new BB 10 age.