Research In Motion’s CEO, Thorsten Heims, caused a great deal of agitation today by hinting that revenue from subscribers might be shaky after the company changed its fee structure:

Subscribers that require enhanced services, including advanced security, mobile device management and other services, are expected to continue to generate monthly service revenue. Other subscribers who do not utilize such services are expected to generate less or no service revenue.

(via Business Insider)

The stock is now down 19.78% on the day.

The stock has been a hot buy in the past few months, more than double than it’s 52-week low of $6.22 ($14.12 on Thursday, for example), but sitting at $11.37 at this moment.

My bet is that RIM will be acquired and turned into a software company, with their Blackberry Messenger service running on someone else’s hardware. With $2.9B in cash on hand and no debt, it’s an attractive target.

But it has to be an increasingly iffy option for corporate buyers, and making Microsoft Windows 8 phone more attractive.