Circle your calendar, BlackBerry to announce Q3 earnings on December 20th

The continuing saga of BlackBerry has its next major chapter on December 20th when the company will report its third quarter results for fiscal 2014. It will be the first earnings report released under the new regime led by CEO John Chen, who replaced Thorsten Heins last month.Heins was removed after the company's largest shareholder failed to find the financing needed to close a $9 a share buyout of the Canadian handset manufacturer. Instead, the company received $1 billion in financing in the form of convertible debt, and Heins was forced to leave the company.

In September, BlackBerry reported a huge operating loss for its fiscal second quarter mostly due to a nearly $1 billion write down of BlackBerry Z10 units that were collecting dust in the warehouse. You probably won't have to do too much digging to find any of the BlackBerry 10 handsets, even the new BlackBerry Z30, available for free or a low price with a signed two-year pact during the holiday.

The days of BlackBerry trailing Android, and now Windows Phone, in the specs department could be over. A rumor that we passed along to you last weekend mentioned a couple of new 'Berry handsets. The BlackBerry Z50 is supposed to be the first smartphone offered from the Canadian based OEM to feature a 5.2 inch 1080 x 1920 resolution display, and be powered by a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor. This model is supposed to be launched in the third quarter of 2014. Prior to the alleged launch of the BlackBerry Z50, we could see the launch of the BlackBerry Q30 during the second quarter of 2014. This would be a flagship QWERTY equipped unit.