In case you missed anything, here’s a quick roundup of the news that powered AllThingsD this week:

1. As AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher and Peter Kafka were first to report this week, Yahoo is seriously thinking about buying hipster blogging service Tumblr. In fact, Yahoo’s board is scheduled to consider a $1.1 billion all-cash deal on Sunday.
2. Google wanted to dominate the headlines this week during the company’s annual I/O conference … just maybe not like this. By sending Microsoft a cease-and-desist, they helped promote that rival’s anti-Google campaign.
3. That little drama didn’t come up during the official proceedings of I/O, but a lot else did. Here’s a rundown of all the news Google announced in its three-and-a-half-hour opening keynote.
4. Watch this: An interview with Bill Gates, in which the Microsoft founder talks about his longtime relationship with Steve Jobs, on “60 Minutes.”
5. Can productivity apps for the iPad make it as useful as a traditional work PC? Walt Mossberg puts them to the test.
6. Speaking of the iPad, the Justice Department is closing in on Apple with an e-book price fixing case … but one of the seemingly most damning pieces of evidence, a line from a letter from Steve Jobs to James Murdoch, is a little less damning in context.
7. Web video services like Amazon, HBO and Hulu all say they’re seeing significant growth. But is anyone cutting into Netflix’s lead? A new report says: Nope!
8. BlackBerry is bringing its messenger application, BBM, to iPhones and Android phones this summer. But is it too late?
9. Cisco’s earnings only barely beat analysts’ expectations this week, but that beat sent the company’s stock up 9 percent in after-hours trading. Arik Hesseldahl got CEO John Chambers on the phone to talk about where Cisco is and where it’s going.
10. And lastly, if you want more battery life out of your iPhone on the go, you may have considered a special re-juicing case. Product reviewer Lauren Goode tries the battery boosters before you buy.

To stay on top of the latest, follow AllThingsD on Twitter and Facebook, and subscribe to our daily email newsletter.

In announcement issued Friday morning, the agency said it has granted iOS devices running iOS 6 FIPS 140-2 certification and STIG approval, granting them the same security clearances it issued to BlackBerry and Samsung last week. A crucial endorsement, and one that should open the door to lucrative contracts from customers in highly regulated industries like healthcare and finance.

Certainly, Apple views it that way and used DOD’s announcement to plug the inroads its iOS devices have been making in enterprise lately.

“With iPhone and iPad being tested or deployed in almost every Fortune 500 company, Apple continues to scale across enterprise with nearly 30,000 companies globally developing and distributing iOS apps for corporate use by their employees,” Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller told AllThingsD. “The FIPS 140-2 certification and STIG approval demonstrate our ongoing commitment to deliver a secure platform to our enterprise and government customers around the world who deploy iOS devices on their networks.”

Research outfit Raymond James says that the debut of BlackBerry’s new BlackBerry 10 operating system and the two handsets on which it runs have gone a long way toward repairing the home-turf market share erosion the company has suffered over the past few years. In the fourth quarter of 2012, BlackBerry’s share of the Canadian market topped out at a dismal 6 percent. But by the first quarter of 2013 it had more than doubled, rising to 13.5 percent.

The reason? The BlackBerry Z10, the company’s new all-touch handset — one that finally gave it table stakes at the smartphone game from which Google and Apple had ousted it. The Z10 had a strong Canadian launch, according to BlackBerry, which said the device’s debut was more than 50 percent better than any other launch day in its history in the country. Evidently the device has retained enough of that early momentum to drive continued market-share gains.

And now, with BlackBerry’s second BB10 handset — the Qwerty-keyboard Q10 — recently introduced in Canada, the country’s largest technology company may be poised to reclaim even more ground in its homeland.

“I think the Q10 will see much better demand than the Z10, as I have to believe the primary reason users are still on BlackBerry is for the physical keyboard,” Raymond James analyst Tavis McCourt told AllThingsD. “That being said, a lot of that demand may get stretched out over a few quarters, as it will take time for enterprises to adopt BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10, which is needed to support the Q10.”

Make no mistake, these days Canada is more an iPhone nation than anything else — Apple’s smartphone claimed 40.1 percent of the market in the first quarter of 2013. But that’s down from the 44 percent share it captured in the fourth quarter of 2012. If that trend continues, maybe BlackBerry can reclaim not only the market share it lost in the country, but its national pride, as well.

As Andrew MacLeod, BlackBerry’s managing director for Canada, told the Financial Post earlier this: “Canada is incredibly important to [us.] It is our home market, but it is also a very strategic market for us. We are very strong here, and I think we have a very unique relationship here with Canadians, that we treat with an endless amount of respect, attention and resources.”

According to new research from IDC, Microsoft’s mobile operating system accounted for 3.2 percent of global smartphone shipments in the first quarter. That’s a significant gain from the OS’s performance in the first quarter of 2012, which saw it capture a market share of 2 percent. And it was enough for Windows Phone to unseat BlackBerry from its third-place spot and claim the rank for its own.

Admittedly, ousting BlackBerry wasn’t exactly a difficult task. In the first quarter, the struggling handset maker saw its share of global smartphone shipments halved year over year. In Q1 of 2012, it claimed a 6.4 percent share. This year, BlackBerry managed to snag only 2.9 percent.

An unfortunate loss of momentum for BlackBerry, though one that’s not entirely attributable to the ascension of other platforms and a lack of interest in its own. BlackBerry is in the midst of a transition to an entirely new OS, BlackBerry 10. Right now, the company has just two smartphones that use it. The bulk of its handset portfolio continues to run on its older OS. And according to IDC analyst Kevin Restivo, that’s almost certainly having an effect on sales.

“Windows Phone is clearly gaining momentum,” Restivo told AllThingsD. “But BlackBerry’s decline this quarter really has more to do with the lag between sales of its old handsets and its new ones than anything else. Sure, Windows Phone is ahead now, but there’s no guarantee that it will maintain its third-place ranking in upcoming quarters.”

And, as I’ve noted before, third place in the current smartphone OS rankings doesn’t mean much. According to IDC, Google and Apple captured 92.3 percent of all smartphone shipments with their Android/iOS duopoly (Android: 59.1 percent; iOS: 23 percent). In other words, Windows Phone and BlackBerry are so far behind the two leading mobile platforms that their ranking is really just a moot point, anyway.

But a few announcements missed the cut.

One of the more interesting was a commitment by Google to support advanced Bluetooth natively in its Android operating system. Google had supported basic Bluetooth for specific things like keyboards and headphones, but had yet to build in support for the latest version of the wireless technology.

The new move opens up opportunities for a range of new accessories, including very low-power devices.

“I think that opportunity is actually going to be huge,” said Steve Hegenderfer, director of developer relations for the group that oversees the Bluetooth specification. Hegenderfer said that Bluetooth devices have gotten so small that the batteries are sometimes the largest component.

But with support for low energy, Hegenderfer said he expects a wave of devices to hit the market in the next year that are powered by kinetic energy — basically, the energy created by a body in motion.

Google’s move will allow those developing such devices for iOS to offer the same products more easily on Android.

Apple already supports the latest version of Bluetooth, as does BlackBerry with BlackBerry 10 and Microsoft with Windows 8 (though not, as yet, with Windows Phone 8).

The lack of Android support has been a sore spot for developers because it makes an already fragmented hardware landscape even more challenging. Nearly all the devices shipping today have chips that support the latest version of Bluetooth, but until Google’s move, developers didn’t have a unified way to call on the Bluetooth functions.

Instead, developers had to tweak their code not only for particular versions of Android but also based on which Bluetooth chip was in use.

While Google announced its plans on Wednesday, support for the new Bluetooth won’t come immediately. It is due to arrive in a month or two, with the next update to the Android programming interfaces.

RELATED POSTS:

• Shoot the Moon: How Google Turned a Hodgepodge of Upgrades Into a Show of Strength
• Google I/O: Music, Maps, Messaging and More
• Larry Page Takes the Pulpit to Praise Technology, Snipe at Competitors
• Next Google Maps Update to Include Better Venue Search, Waze-Like Rerouting
• Google Gives Search a Deeper Voice and Adds Reminders and More to Google Now
• With Revamped Hangouts, Google Aims to Unify Messaging
• Google+ Gets a Bit More Pinteresting
• Google Chrome: 750 Million Active Users, Synchronized Web and Mobile Browsing
• Coming Soon From Google: A $649 Samsung Galaxy S4 Running Stock Android
• With Sights Set on Spotify (And Pandora), Google Launches a Music Subscription Service
• Google on Android: 900 Million Activations, New Tools for Developers Coming
• Google Doubles Down on Music Subscriptions, Which Means Google Isn’t Serious About Music Subscriptions
• Where Are They Now? Google I/O 2012 Edition.
• At I/O, Google Tilts Toward Android Services Over Android OS
• Google Downplays Expectations Ahead of I/O Developer Conference
• Will Google Deliver on Its Nexus Q Promise? Not at This Year’s I/O.
• Ahead of I/O, Google Wallet Drops Plans to Introduce a Physical Card
• Google Goes With Unified I/O Keynote (But Will It Unify Its Products?)

As a pioneering mobile device company, one would think that “mobile first” is a redundant call to arms for BlackBerry. And of course it is. By making that remark, Heins was offering a broader point about BlackBerry’s view of the mobile space. As he said later, “We believe in a single element of mobile computing: The one on your hip.”

It’s BlackBerry’s view that the smartphone is not simply a handset, but also a mobile computing engine that can drive the other devices we use during our daily lives — our entertainment systems, the tech in our cars and other connected peripherals. And it’s Heins’s opinion that there will soon be another disruption in mobile computing as the industry more broadly adopts that view.

“Mobile has become a fundamental part of our lives, and the next decade will see a major shift in how it impacts our lives,” Heins said. “It will be as monumental as the shift from wired to wireless.”

And BlackBerry is positioning itself to take advantage of it. Said Heins, “We will show the world that BlackBerry understands the mobile world better than anyone else.”

Big talk for a company still struggling to turn itself around. But that’s what these keynote events are all about — victory laps and optimism. And after a few years of floundering, BlackBerry does finally seem to be crystallizing its view of the space in which it competes and how best to succeed in it.

“Drilling down from desktop experiences and trying to fit them in the mobile space just doesn’t work,” Heins said. “People don’t want the desktop experience in a mobile device. Mobile devices need a mobile experience. Putting the desktop paradigm on them doesn’t work. Our only focus is mobile. We are the original mobile-first company.”

So that’s the big pitch. And now that Heins has made it, BlackBerry has to begin the difficult work of delivering on it. A daunting task when Apple and Google continue to so thoroughly dominate the mobile computing space. But BlackBerry has managed to hang on this long after the upheaval of 2012. Who’s to say it won’t scramble back.

“Some people told me last year that BlackBerry World would be the company’s last conference and my first and last time on the stage,” Heins said. “Well, I’m happy to say they were wrong. Not only are we still here, we are firing on all cylinders and we are definitely in the race.”

Come summer, BlackBerry will release BBM as a standalone app. Initially, it will be targeted at Apple’s iOS 6 and Android Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0) and above, and will provide a basic feature set. But CEO Thorsten Heins said the company intends to flesh it out further in the months that follow.

“We’re committed to making the BBM experience on other platforms as fully featured as we can,” Heins said. “We’ll start with messaging and groups, but we’ll add voice and screen share later on. … BB10 is such a strong platform that we are confident it can become an independent messaging solution.”

A big move, far too long in coming.

Arguably, BlackBerry should have done this years ago. BBM is a tentpole feature of the company’s OS, and remains in wide use today. As Heins observed this morning, the service has about 60 million users, who send and receive some 10 billion messages every day — about half of them are read within 20 seconds of receipt. That’s a big installed base with serious engagement.

Sadly for BlackBerry, some strong cross-platform messaging solutions emerged during the years that it withheld BBM from iOS and Android. WhatsApp, which recently appeared at our D: Dive Into Mobile conference, is bigger than Twitter, which officially claims 200 million monthly active users. The company’s daily message tally: Eight billion inbound and 12 billion outbound. Then there’s Kik. And Apple’s iMessage, which, despite its problems, is pretty popular.

That’s not to say that BBM is going to have a tough time making inroads on iOS and Android, just that it would have had a far, far easier time of it a few years ago.

Designed for emerging markets, the Q5 is intended to flesh out the lower end of BlackBerry’s new handset portfolio. Details are slim, but the device seems to be the rumored R10 that has been stoking chatter on gadget sites for months now. The Q5 features a Qwerty keyboard and a 3.1-inch touchscreen. BlackBerry is offering it in four colors: Red, white, black and pink. The company expects to bring the Q5 to market sometime this summer; price has yet to be disclosed.

Also announced this morning: BlackBerry 10.1 for the BlackBerry Z10 — which will begin rolling out to U.S. carriers later this month — and BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10.1.

Today, BlackBerry is in a far less precarious position. It has finally managed to ship BlackBerry 10 — along with a couple of handsets on which to run it — and all have been generally well received. The company’s touchscreen smartphone, the Z10, set launch-day sales records in Canada and the U.K.; its Qwerty sibling, the Q10, has been garnering positive reviews; takeover rumors have gone quiet; the company reported a surprise profit in its most recent quarter, and its shares are up some 25 percent since the beginning of the year. While BlackBerry hasn’t yet escaped the skepticism that mercilessly dogged it last year, it has provided investors and developers — and really anyone with an interest in the company — some reason for cautious optimism, despite the still daunting challenges ahead of it.

There’s a lot riding on BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins’s keynote address at BlackBerry Live tomorrow morning, but the company is in a far better place to deliver. So what can we expect from Heins when he takes the stage tomorrow?

• An update on BlackBerry 10 handset sales volume and momentum. Heins has previously said he expects to ship “tens of millions” of BlackBerry Q10 handsets. Is that still the goal? What are the company’s expectations for the Z10?
• Perhaps, the unveiling of BlackBerry 10.1 for the Z10, which brings a number of new features to the device, including the ability to install Skype.
• An update on developer support for BlackBerry 10, the current tally of apps in BlackBerry World, and perhaps the announcement of some new and much-needed marquee apps.
  As I’ve previously reported, Netflix and Instagram have both declined to build native apps for BlackBerry 10. BlackBerry has said it is committed to bringing both of them and other top titles to its new platform. Heins’s keynote would be an excellent time to announce a few victories.
• Further insight into BlackBerry’s view of the tablet market. Heins recently made headlines for some bearish remarks about the future of tablets, saying, “In five years, I don’t think there’ll be a reason to have a tablet anymore.” If that’s the case, what is BlackBerry’s overall view of the future of mobile computing?
• An update of BlackBerry’s promised portfolio of BlackBerry 10 devices. What does the lineup look like beyond the Z10 and Q10? When will the rumored R10 ship? The company has already hit the market’s high end, presumably it plans to hit its middle and lower ends as well. What sort of device is it planning for emerging markets?

So, lots of issues to talk about, all of them speaking to a common theme. Now that Heins has seemingly succeeded in righting BlackBerry’s listing ship, where is it headed? And how is it going to get there?

“We think that there is an important place for BlackBerry,” Mead told attendees of the Jefferies 2013 Global Technology, Media and Telecom Conference this week. “Three to four operating systems is good for the industry and good for us,” he concluded, noting that Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS is another good candidate.

No disputing that; more diversity in the smartphone market would also benefit consumers. Trouble is, consumers seem pretty happy with the current duopoly. According to recent research from Canaccord Genuity, Apple and Android juggernaut Samsung captured about 100 percent of global smartphone industry profits in the March quarter.

Not that those companies’ domination of the market is unassailable. Mead said Verizon is seeing decent customer interest in BlackBerry’s new handsets and thinks it will only improve with the launch of the QWERTY-keyboarded BlackBerry Q10. “We have a lot of BlackBerry customers on our network,” he said. “There seems to be a hunger for the QWERTY keyboard.”

In the first quarter of the year, Apple captured 57 percent of global smartphone industry profits. That left 43 percent for the taking. And Samsung, says Canaccord Genuity, took all of it — leaving nothing for BlackBerry, Nokia, or anyone else competing for the currently mythical title of “third smartphone platform.”

Ugly news for would-be smartphone players, but not quite as ugly as it could have been. For them, the first quarter of 2013 is actually an improvement over last quarter, when Apple and Samsung captured 103 percent of handset industry profits — a milestone achievement made possible only by their heroic operating-loss sacrifice.

“Due to operating losses from smaller scale competitors trying to compete, Apple and Samsung’s combined share of industry profits have exceeded 100 percent in previous quarters,” Canaccord Genuity T. Michael Walkley explained. “While Apple and Samsung continue to dominate the share of industry profits, improving cost structures and results from other OEMs have reduced Apple and Samsung’s combined share to 100 percent from levels above 100 percent the past several quarters.”

Progress!

Japes aside, it is worth noting that even as Apple and Samsung continue to utterly dominate the handset market’s operating profits, there are shifts occuring in their duopoly. A year ago, Apple’s share topped out at 74 percent and Samsung’s at 23 percent.

So, clearly, the operating profit balance between the two companies is changing.* Indeed, Canaccord Genuity figures that Samsung is on track to surpass Apple to claim the largest share of handset industry profits, perhaps within the next few months. Said Walkley, “During the June quarter, we believe softer iPhone sales combined with strong Samsung Galaxy S4 sales could result in Samsung surpassing Apple for the top share of handset industry profits.”

Certainly possible, given the trend in Canaccord Genuity’s numbers — but for how long? Samsung’s ascension hinges on softening iPhone sales, and iPhone sales typically only soften ahead of the launch of a new iPhone, which will inevitably spike Apple’s handset sales and its share of the industry’s profits.

* Caveat: According to Canaccord Genuity, “some Android OEMs such as Samsung and HTC include tablet sales in reported smartphone sales and profits,” so there’s a wild card to consider here.

According to sources close to the situation, well-known tech exec Jon Rubinstein will be joining the board of Qualcomm, the San Diego-based chipmaker that has gotten a big boost of late for its role in the explosion of mobile devices.

Rubinstein is an interesting and logical choice for Qualcomm, having been a high-profile player for a long time in the mobile space, beginning with his work on the iPod while at Apple. After he left his last job at Hewlett-Packard last year, though, he has been very low-key.

(Update: Qualcomm confirmed the appointment in a press release.)

For Qualcomm, the selection of Rubinstein to join the board is something to watch, as he is the second exec from Silicon Valley to be tapped by the company recently. In March, Qualcomm hired tech investor Laurie Yoler as SVP of business development, making her “responsible for augmenting existing business relationships in Silicon Valley, as well as developing new strategic business opportunities for Qualcomm in the region.”

Rubinstein has even more experience here and is also familiar with a range of mobile efforts over the years, some of which were successful and others not so much, from his work at Apple, Palm and then HP. He is also a board member of Amazon.

Aside from CEO and Chairman Paul Jacobs, Rubinstein — who has degrees in electrical engineering and computer science — will be the most technically experienced director on the 11-person board.

Qualcomm declined to comment.

Here’s a nice primer on Rubinstein by Arik Hesseldahl, in a report on his leaving HP early last year:

Best known for his work on Apple’s iconic iPod music player, Rubinstein left Apple in 2006 and joined Roger McNamee as a partner in the private equity firm Elevation Partners, following its 2007 investments in Palm.

In 2009 he replaced longtime Palm executive Ed Colligan as its CEO, and oversaw a dramatic restructuring of the company’s products, including a significant rebuild of its smartphone operating system. Gone was the legacy PalmOS that had been used in so many popular devices like the Treo that for a time competed seriously against Research In Motion’s BlackBerry.

PalmOS was replaced by WebOS, which first appeared on the Pre smartphone, then later on the Pixi and Veer devices. After HP acquired Palm, WebOS was also used on the abandoned TouchPad tablet, and is now an open-source operating system overseen by HP.

Rubinstein’s departure is no big surprise. Sources said he hadn’t been seen at HP’s offices following the decision by former CEO Léo Apotheker to get out of the business of making WebOS-based hardware. His future plans have been the subject of speculation for some time.

After HP decided to exit the WebOS hardware business, Rubinstein was assigned to a vaguely described “product innovation role” within HP’s Personal Systems Group during a management shakeup last July. It was an unusual move and one made with little explanation at the time. But sources say it was a preface to Rubinstein’s departure, one intended to lessen its PR impact when he finally left. “That ‘innovation’ gig he was given in July was his first step toward the exit,” said one source, a former Palm exec with close ties to Rubinstein.

According to the latest metrics from comScore, Apple was the top smartphone manufacturer in the U.S. during the quarter, capturing a 39 percent share of the market, up from 36.3 percent in the prior quarter. With a 21.7 percent share, up slightly from the 21 percent it posted in December, Samsung placed second in comScore’s rankings.

Bringing up the rear: HTC, Motorola and LG, which all claimed less than 10 percent shares after quarter-to-quarter declines.

On the smartphone platform side of the business, Google claimed the top ranking despite a decline in market share from 53.4 percent to 52 percent. Apple placed second with a share that rose to 39 percent from 36.3 percent. BlackBerry ranked third — declining to 5.2 percent from 6.4 percent, and Microsoft ranked fourth with a 3 percent share, up from 2.9 percent.

Late Thursday, the U.S. Department of Defense granted security approvals to BlackBerry’s new BlackBerry 10 devices — the Z10 and Q10 — and to a version of Samsung’s Galaxy S4 that’s outfitted with Knox, the company’s new security software.

Though DOD approval won’t result in immediate product orders for either company, it does clear the way for orders to be placed in the future. Good news, since the Pentagon currently has some 600,000 mobile device users. More important, however, are the implications of the agency’s endorsement.

Certification by the Pentagon is the gold standard in mobile device security. And it opens the door to all sorts of lucrative contracts from government customers and those from highly regulated industries like healthcare and finance.

So, truly a significant milestone for BlackBerry and Samsung, which, with Knox, has just fielded the very first approved-for-DOD-use Android-powered device. But not for Apple. It, too, is seeking security clearance for iOS 6. But the Pentagon has yet to grant it, though it is expected to later this month.

The finding comes in a new report from Gartner containing the results of a survey of CIOs around the world. So it’s not for nothing that Gartner calls these BYOD strategies “the most radical change to the economics and culture of client computing” in a decade.

When you think about it, BYOD amounts to a pretty fundamental shift in the way companies handle the knotty questions around supplying employees the tools they need to get the job done. For years, standard operating procedure at pretty much every company was to give a computer and maybe a phone or BlackBerry to every employee who needed them, and for the company to bear the cost. (Gartner, incidentally, includes PCs in its BYOD definition.)

What started with an occasional request for the IT department to support smartphones and tablets with access to work email has blown up into a huge shift in the way that corporate IT services are supplied to employees.

Right now, Gartner said, mid-sized companies of $500 million to $5 billion in sales and 2,500 to 5,000 employees are most likely to be using a BYOD approach. BYOD-friendly companies are twice as common in the U.S. as in Europe, but employees in India, China and Brazil are most likely to be using a personal device on the job.

And if you’re looking for some figures to drive the point home, here’s one: 38 percent of companies expect to stop supplying employees with their devices entirely by 2016. But executives aren’t yet completely sold on the idea: Only 22 percent say they’ve made a good business case for adopting a BYOD move. There are, Gartner said, many benefits, not the least of which are lower costs and a happier work force.

But, once again the rule has been broken, this time by Spanish tennis player David Ferrer, tweeting his affection for Samsung’s Galaxy S4, and doing so from an iPhone.

According to AppleInsider, the tweet was quickly deleted and replaced with one not sent from an iPhone.

But, of course, the change came only after people noticed, saved a copy of the tweet and began pointing out the obvious contradiction between stated opinion and the real world.

Ferrer is in good company with other celebs who have made similar moves, including singer Alicia Keys, who briefly continued to tweet from her iPhone after accepting a gig as creative director for BlackBerry.

“In five years I don’t think there’ll be a reason to have a tablet anymore,” Heins said in an interview yesterday at the Milken Institute conference, according to Bloomberg. “Maybe a big screen in your workspace, but not a tablet as such. Tablets themselves are not a good business model.”

They certainly haven’t been a good business model for BlackBerry. The company’s PlayBook tablet was unquestionably a failure, one that forced it to take a $485 million charge to write down unsold inventory in 2012. But for other companies — most notably Apple — the tablet market has been quite lucrative. In Apple’s last quarter, the company shipped 19.5 million iPads — 7.7 million more than it did the year prior.

So what’s Heins’s problem with tablets? There would seem to be two. The first: BlackBerry doesn’t have a good angle on the tablet business yet — something it needs to compete in a market where profits can be tight. The company is reevaluating its approach, because right now the tablet market is a lousy place for BlackBerry and pretty much any company not named Apple or Samsung.

The second: The mobile computing space is evolving very quickly, and Heins seems to have doubts about the viability of tablets going forward. Now, regardless of how much credence you lend that view, you’ve got to concede that five years is an awful long time in tech; few companies know that better than BlackBerry, which saw its early lead in smartphones whittled away in short order by Apple and Google. Who knows? Maybe some new technology will emerge in the next few years that will kick the legs out from under the tablet market. Sounds implausible now, but a few years back, the BlackBerry was widely known as the CrackBerry, and no one was using iPhones.

In any event, BlackBerry’s official position is not to read too, too much into Heins’s dismissal of the tablet market.

“The comments that Thorsten made yesterday are in line with previous comments he has made about the future of mobile computing overall, and the possibilities that come with a platform like BlackBerry 10,” BlackBerry spokesman Alex Kinsella told AllThingsD. “We continue to evaluate our tablet strategy, but we are not making any shifts in that strategy in the short term. When we do have information about our PlayBook strategy, we will share it.”

Just you wait, BlackBerry is going to sell a ton of its new Qwerty-keyboard-equipped Q10 smartphone.

This according to Thorsten Heins, the struggling smartphone maker’s CEO, and early sales of the device seem to so far support that assertion. Speaking at the Milken Institute conference on Monday, Heins said the company has high hopes for the Q10. “We have very, very good first signs already after the launch in the U.K.,” Heins said. “This is going into the installed base of more than 70 million BlackBerry users, so we have quite some expectations. We expect several tens of million of units.”

Is that a reasonable expectation, or an unreasonable one?

Though it only began shipping in the U.K. a few days ago, the Q10 already seems to be in very high demand. Selfridges & Co., a British department store that had an early exclusive on the Q10, blew through its initial stock within two hours last Friday. And on Monday the store issued a press release declaring the handset its fastest-selling consumer electronics product ever. Said Selfridges exec Julian Slim, “The BlackBerry Q10 has been, without a doubt, the most highly anticipated smartphone we have ever sold and is already our most successful.”

Now, granted, we’re talking about one department store chain with four locations in a single country. Still, Selfridges & Co.’s experience suggests that are plenty of BlackBerry loyalists out there who have been waiting patiently for the company’s next Qwerty phone. And the Q10 has been garnering some great reviews that may push consumers looking for a serious smartphone with a physical keyboard to consider it.

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly characterized Selfridges & Co.’s smartphone selection as limited. That is not the case. Carphone Warehouse maintains a store-within-a-store at Selfridges & Co., offering a full selection of smartphones — though the department store’s website does not reflect that inventory.

Three months after promising Skype for BlackBerry 10, BlackBerry says the Internet telephony service’s app is finally on its way to its next-generation operating system. The struggling smartphone maker said this week that Skype will be available for its new Q10 Qwerty handset on launch day. That’s May 1 in Canada, and sometime before the end of May in the U.S.

Note that Skype’s May debut is limited solely to the Q10. The full-touchscreen Z10, which preceded it to market, isn’t expected to offer Skype support until “a few weeks” after its launch on the Q10. Pressed for more specificity, BlackBerry would say only: “Skype for BlackBerry Z10 customers will be available when 10.1 is rolled out in the coming weeks.”

Is that “coming weeks,” as in less than a month? Or “coming weeks,” as in “as many as we need until we actually get the thing out the door?” Tough to say.

Anyway … Skype’s forthcoming debut on BB10 is good news for BlackBerry. Mobile platforms are only as strong as their app ecosystems. And support for top-tier apps like Skype are absolutely crucial to BlackBerry’s turnaround and continued relevance in the smartphone industry. The introduction could see some rough spots, though: In the course of reviewing the Q10, Katie Boehret ran into trouble when she tried the Skype app a couple of times, with her caller unable to see her video.