With RIM's share price powering to a seven month high (albeit down 30 percent year-on-year), some people clearly still consider there's a place in the mobile ecosystem for BlackBerry devices.

Quite how large that place is, we won't see until BlackBerry 10 launches in February 2013, so it's all systems go at RIM as it works towards that release.

It's announced that the BlackBerry 10 developer toolkit, which contains the final tools, components, and APIs required to make games and apps for BB10, has gone gold and is now available to developers.

These range from tools for C/C++ native development (including BlackBerry Cascades for Qt/C++) to WebWorks for HTML5 and Adobe's AIR platform.

Systems go

Following the news in early November that more than 50 operators are testing the platform, this should mean the pieces are in place to ensure the devices work well and that the ecosystem will be populated with plenty of apps at launch.

"We have been actively engaged with developers from around the world for many months and as we near the final weeks toward the launch of BlackBerry 10, the growing dedication and commitment we see from our developer community is truly outstanding," said Alec Saunders, RIM's veep of developer relations.

"The focus we have had on building a true developer ecosystem and community is clearly working."

You can find out more from the BlackBerry Developer site.