Ever read a news story and, without any inside knowledge, think “that’s never going to happen”? Well I just did, after reading an article about the discontinuation of the Storm by RIM.

I mean, we can play the tabloid game (you know like when a “newspaper” says something like “Batchild Born” and the story is about Adam West – he played the best Batman ever- and his wife giving birth to a baby boy) and read too much into this. Maybe they’re discontinuing the 9530/9500 Storm. Or maybe they’re going to pull a “the Tour2 is actually the Bold 9650” word game switcheroo. It’s even possible that the Storm 3 is such a revamp that it barely resembles the current Storm phones.

I’m willing to accept that I don’t know what RIM is planning – mostly because I truly don’t – but it’s going to take some good reasoning to convince me that they’re doing away with the Storm line. For RIM to truly compete in the consumer market, they NEED to have a touchscreen device. Otherwise, people are going to run to Android and the iPhone like extras in a Godzilla movie.

I just think it would be RIM-arkably (sorry, too tempting) stupid to do away with the Storm line, unless you’ve got something better to replace it.

To be fair, it’s all just rumors (and we all know how much those change – and how quickly) but this could get really interesting over the next few months.

Guru Ricky