Shares of BlackBerry maker Research in Motion Ltd. climbed 5 percent Tuesday after a Wall Street analyst praised its forthcoming QNX operating system as a flexible and portable application platform that will span its smartphone lineup sooner than expected.

Jefferies & Co. analyst Peter Misek said his evaluation of the new operating software indicates it offers a good web browsing experience, is more bandwidth-efficient and secure than Apple's iOSS or Google's Android, is easily scalable to both low-end and high-end devices and makes it easy for developers to port Android apps to the new software, which will debut with the release of RIM's Playbook tablet early next year.

The total mobile ecosystem will balloon into a $1-trillion market by 2014, according to market researcher Gartner, which advises enterprises to develop a "high-level mobile strategy," rather than committing to any particular device or platform.

Mobile will generate revenue from a wide range of additional voice and data services such as context, advertising, application and service sales, totaling $1 trillion dollars annually by 2014, according to Gartner analysts addressing last week's Gartner Symposium/ITxpo in Stamford, Conn.

August data released yesterday from The Nielsen Company, confirms what research firms and observers have been asserting for months: that Android is now the most popular smartphone operating system.

Nielsen reports that Android was the top choice among people who bought a smartphone in the past six months, while Blackberry RIM and Apple iOS are in a statistical dead heat for second place among recent buyers. Among all smartphone owners, Blackberry still clings to its lead with 31 percent of the market, the firm says, though its edge over Apple, with 28 percent, is slipping while Google's Android is gaining rapidly, now with 19 percent of smartphone users.

Last Friday software developer BlindType announced in a blog post that it has been bought by Google.

BlindType makes software that it plans to sell to mobile device manufacturers and mobile OS makers. The software aims to bring tactile feedback back to typing on mobile devices, which was lost with the introduction of the touch screen that doesn't offer such feedback, the company explains.

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion finally plans to jettison the oft-criticized BlackBerry OS in favor of new software developed by QNX Software Systems, which RIM acquired earlier this year. And the new platform could debut as early as next week, when RIM may unveil its long-rumored tablet, known as the "BlackPad" at its developer conference, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

Much criticized as slow, buggy and not competitive with Apple's iOS and Google's Android operating system, the latest release of the BlackBerry OS, version 6, has met with lukewarm reviews. And the first BlackBerry OS 6 device, the Torch, has suffered lackluster sales compared to the hot-selling iPhone and a slew of new Android-based smartphones.