Responding to a Boy Genius Report post claiming it hasn’t yet been able to integrate its core email, calendar and messenger features into BlackBerry 10, RIM said the post was “inaccurate and uninformed,” and reiterated its original explanation for delaying the first phones running its next-generation platform until the latter half of 2012: The company is waiting on a more power-efficient LTE chipset.

“RIM made a strategic decision to launch BlackBerry 10 devices with a new, LTE-based dual core chip set architecture,” the company said in a statement given to AllThingsD. “As explained on our earnings call, the broad engineering impact of this decision and certain other factors significantly influenced the anticipated timing for the BlackBerry 10 devices. The anonymous claim suggesting otherwise is inaccurate and uninformed. As RIM has previously explained, and as Mike Lazaridis reiterated on the earnings call, we will not launch BlackBerry 10 devices until we know they are ready and we believe this new chip set architecture is required to deliver the world class user experience that our customers will expect. Any suggestion to the contrary is simply false.”

So … whom to believe? That’s a tough call at this point, given RIM’s narrative over the past year. As one source close to the company told me, “I don’t know if the BGR report is true, but it’s certainly plausible. RIM’s a train wreck right now and the ‘we’re waiting for an LTE’ excuse rings a bit hollow to me.” Whatever the case, it’s easy to believe the worst, and that’s sadly telling in itself.

The real surprise in RIM’s earnings warning was the fact that the company somehow thinks the situation will turn around in the second half of the year.

On Thursday, RIM slashed its forecast for the current quarter just one month after issuing the forecast, which itself was below what analysts were expecting. However, RIM also said Thursday that it sees things picking up toward the end of the year with full-year earnings still hitting $7.50 per share, reflecting “anticipated strong revenue growth in the third and fourth quarters of the fiscal year.”

That RIM is so confident seems surprising, particularly given what is known about the direction the company is headed.

By all accounts, the company is losing ground in mature markets like the United States and can expect much stiffer competition in emerging markets as cheaper Android phones become a global mainstay. In the United States, for example, RIM saw its share of the smartphone market drop 5 percentage points in the first quarter, to 14 percent, according to NPD.

Nonetheless, RIM sounded an upbeat note in both the earnings warning and subsequent conference call.

“As we’ve said before, we feel great about the BlackBerry platform and the PlayBook and how they’re doing,” co-CEO Jim Balsillie said on the earnings conference call.

But just why is that?

The PlayBook has debuted to rather disappointing reviews. On top of that, AT&T has yet to even enable the software that lets the tablet tether to a BlackBerry, severely limiting the tablet’s appeal for BlackBerry owners on that network. Verizon, which had been believed to be planning to launch a version of the tablet, said after the Wi-Fi version hit the market that it is still evaluating whether to offer a model that connects directly to its network.

RIM said it expects PlayBook shipments this quarter to match its estimates, but it didn’t specify a number. Plus, the company is still in the process of getting the device out to retailers. The real question is how well those tablets leave the store shelves.

As for the company’s phone products, enthusiast site Boy Genius Report has leaked a whole lineup of yet-to-be-announced BlackBerries–and they mostly resemble the current crop, albeit with a touchscreen added on.

The touchscreen is certainly a nice feature, but as the Storm and Torch have shown it is certainly not a panacea for an aging platform and a lack of top-notch apps. RIM has talked about eventually bringing to the BlackBerry the QNX operating system that powers the PlayBook. However, it has yet to give a time frame for that.

Luckily, the world shouldn’t have to wait too long to make up its own mind about the future of the BlackBerry platform. The company’s key event of the year–BlackBerry World–takes place next week in Orlando.

However, those ready to throw away their MiFi should remember that there’s an important caveat: Because the CDMA network doesn’t handle voice and data at the same time, the hotspot works only when you aren’t talking on your iPhone.

If a call comes in while people are connected to the iPhone-created hotspot, data access ends until the call is done.

Meanwhile, it’s worth noting that Boy Genius Report says that the hotspot may not remain a Verizon exclusive. The enthusiast site says that the next version of the iPhone operating system will add support for the hotspot feature. However, to actually be used in such a manner, hotspot capability will also have to be enabled by one’s wireless carrier.

AT&T iPhone customers will certainly remember that the iPhone supported tethering to a computer well before the company enabled the feature for its customers.

An AT&T representative said the company is “exploring” the possibility of such a feature but declined to comment further.

Among those paying attention: Mail.com owner Jay Penske, who has just purchased Geller’s three-and-a-half year-old site, which averages around a million visitors per month.

Geller will be added to Penske’s growing stable of Web site operators, which includes high-profile gets like Hollywood power blogger Nikki Finke and celebrity editrix Bonnie Fuller.

Geller wouldn’t tell me what the terms were, but said the deal for his company — he’s the sole owner, and employs three writers — is worth “multiple millions”. If that sounds familiar, it’s because we heard similar numbers batted around when Penske bought Finke’s one-woman site last summer.

I assume the terms include an upfront payment, equity in Penske’s company and payouts triggered by traffic and/or revenue goals, so there’s likely a good deal of wiggle room in the deal.

In any case, it’s a nice bit of validation for a 23-year-old who never made it to college. Geller dropped out of Greenwich High School in Greenwich, Conn., presumably because he was too busy contributing posts to tech kingpin Engadget. He started his own site in October 2006.

Geller says he’s kept his name off of his posts, and off his site because it seemed like a good idea, “for marketing reasons.”

He will still keep his name off the site, but will be making a few changes under Penske’s ownership. Geller is changing the url to an easier-to-find bgr.com, for instance. And Penske will be bringing his own people to replace Federated Media, which has been handing sales for the site.

The content should remain the same, though: Plenty of stat-heavy posts about everything from Apple’s (AAPL)’s new iPhone (duh) to Research in Motion’s (RIMM) annual BlackBerry convention.

A few things worth noting: The document features a misspelling. Is that an honest error, a canary trap or proof that the doc is bogus? No idea. June 5 is just three days before Apple’s (AAPL) Worldwide Developers Conference kicks off, the occasion at which the company is expected to announce its next-generation iPhone.

Now, it’s doubtful Palm would debut the Pre on the same day as a big Apple event that will drown us all in a deluge of iPhone and is-Steve-Jobs-OK-or-not news and speculation. But would it launch it a couple days prior?