ORLANDO — Thorsten Heins, the CEO of Research In Motion, today clarified comments he made weeks ago about RIM refocusing on the enterprise market, saying the company was not leaving the consumer business behind.

Heins said what he meant was the company needed to eliminate some services the company was doing in-house, and instead achieve those consumer-based goals with partnerships rather than going it alone. While enterprise is still RIM’s core strength, Heins said the company would continue to market and sell devices and services to the consumer market.

Heins also unequivocally contradicted reports that RIM was abandoning physical keyboards on phones, a traditional RIM strength. Saying BlackBerrys had the best physical keyboards on the planet, Heins 100% confirmed there will be a BlackBerry 10 device with a keyboard when the new platform debuts this fall.

He wouldn’t say whether or not there would be a new tablet when BlackBerry 10 devices arrive, but he did say that if RIM creates a new tablet, it would be marketed to enterprise customers first, with a consumer play later, if at all. Broadly, Heins sees tablets as an “on-ramp” to mobile computing.

Heins also spoke about his philosophies and RIM’s approach to the market.

“We spend a lot of time on who are we mostly talking to, who is the target customer,” he said. “The common denominator with all our customers is that they are striving to succeed.”

Heins said “success” didn’t necessarily mean in business. It could also be personal, but the main challenge that they all have is managing their relationships.

SEE ALSO: With BlackBerry 10, RIM Is Fighting the Wrong War

“What do I need to succeed?” Heins said RIM’s customers are asking. “How do I manage all these connections and communications channels? I’m creating them with relationships, but i’m now subject to them as well.”

To Heins, the answer to those questions is BlackBerry 10. Heins emphasized the benefits and abilities the new OS, which has “real-time” multitasking, with apps that don’t stop or pause when they’re in the background.

Between now and then, though, Heins provided little guidance for customers. He said RIM would continue to develop and support BlackBerry 7 (the OS on current RIM devices, except the PlayBook tablet), but he was unspecific when asked about what sort of upgrade path there might be for BB7 customers.

What do you think of Heins’s comments? Is it the right strategy, or does it need adjustment? Have your say in the comments.

Photo by Peter Pachal

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Saying BlackBerry 10 is all about the “flow” between apps, RIM CEO Thorsten Heins showed how users could quickly see other apps running by “glancing back” via menus that peek out from the side.

The cameras on BlackBerry 10 phones will be able to capture imagery before and after you take the shot, letting you “go back in time” in case, say, someone closes their eyes. In his keynote, Heins showed how it could be targeted by area.

RIM’s known for physical keyboards, but the onscreen keyboard steals the show in BlackBerry 10. The phone predicts what words you want to type, putting them above the keys they start with. If you want to delete entire words, just start swiping backward.

Cascades are a BB10 developer tool (in beta) that lets app creators easily add dynamic elements to items like buttons, check boxes and fields. They’re compatible with multiple programming languages, and animations are built in: for example, a check box doesn’t just appear, it “springs” into place, as RIM describes. There’s also a Cascades plug-in for Photoshop.

Individual apps can check the battery status and either warn the user that the task they’re about to start might result in data loss, or take precautions, like dimming the screen.

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