RIM’s CEO Thorsten Heins has been explaining why the manufacturer has pushed back the arrival of BlackBerry 10 to 2013, while admitting that he is also currently using the Samsung Galaxy S III. 

After a turbulent few weeks, Heins has come back fighting, explaining to CIO.com that delaying BlackBerry 10 was the right thing to do.

“I could actually have kept the schedule, if I had made a sacrifice on quality and on platform stability. And I decided not to do that, because I need to make sure that when we deliver a BlackBerry, it is best quality,” Heins said.

“Rush it out again, and then fix the quality stuff later; or bring it out with high quality? What I commit to the public out there is that when we ship BlackBerry 10, we will do it at high quality. That was the decision I made.”

Heins also responded to critics who claimed the company had not been innovative enough in the past and that this was the  fundamental reason why it had lost ground on rival manufacturers: 

“We didn't miss on innovation. I think we missed on understanding, specifically in the US, that this trend was shifting, and that our positioning and our value proposition in the US market was not following that trend shift,” he said.

This “understanding” lies specifically with 4G and LTE, with Heins admitting RIM didn’t invest in the technology as much as it should have done.

However, those writing off RIM or citing a possible buyout of the company, possibly by Microsoft, are way off the mark, according to Heins. He is confident that though RIM will be reducing the number of devices it rolls out, the quality of them - along with BlackBerry 10 itself - will see the company restored to former glories.

“In January with the full touch device and the Qwerty coming, I think we will reinstall faith in RIM. That's what we're working on,” Heins said.

While Heins clearly still believes in the BlackBerry brand – well he would say that, wouldn’t he – the CEO did admit to keeping a close eye on the competition, so much so that he said he was currently using the Samsung Galaxy S III as his secondary device.

What do you think the future holds for RIM? Let us know in the comments below.