BlackBerry 7 is based on the company's existing OS, but it is designed to serve as a transition to a new operating system that RIM is developing based on technology from QNX, a company it acquired.

"BlackBerry 7 has a lot of runway," said Jim Balsillie, co-CEO of RIM. "We believe it can carry us through a transition to QNX-based smartphones."

Still, he acknowledged that "getting to this point has been choppy." In the previous quarter, RIM shipped 13.2 million BlackBerry phones.

RIM expects the bulk of phones next year to be based on BlackBerry 7, with QNX phones representing a subset of high-end devices.

At the company's annual developer conference in October, RIM plans to unveil its new development platform for QNX and launch phones for developers.