On the recent RIM earnings call one of the most unexpected things said by RIM's Founder and Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis was this:

"Well, we've got a lot of planned announcements at DevCon in October, and we've got -- we'll be announcing our new development platform for QNX and our QNX-based phones. We'll be launching the development phones, so that people can start experiencing the QNX phones and the applications. So we've got a lot of things planned. At this point, we want to be careful not to give up too many of our secrets and specifications of the product and delivery dates. But we're very excited, and the fact that we've already got the development phones operating right now and we're testing them is a great sign"

The announcement that QNX developer phones would be present at the BlackBerry Developers Conference next month definitely came as a surprise to me. And heck, I wouldn't doubt it came as a surprise to many a RIM employee as well (just like how Jim Balsillie said the PlayBook would get native email in 60 days...lol). This definitely is a new move for RIM. Typically new moves for RIM end up having a back story to them, and by piecing together various rumors and intel I think I have a pretty good hypothesis of what's happening here.