RIM's PlayBook can't even stand to look at you.

Everyone knows that Blackberry’s once-mighty manufacturer is in trouble. The company laid off workers in July. Carriers don’t want to support the 4G Playbook tablet. The company’s messaging service has even been scapegoated for riots in London and elsewhere in the UK. Its new suite of smartphones may be the best Blackberries ever made, but probably won’t be enough to solve the company’s deeper problems.

But after Google’s hefty purchase offer for Motorola Mobility Holdings, RIM’s stock is rallying for the first time in almost a year.

Analysts say buyers feel sanguine about RIM largely because of one of four scenarios:

1. One of the other smartphone players will buy RIM like Google bought Motorola. Jefferies & Co analyst Peter Misek thinks Apple, Samsung or Microsoft are candidates to buy RIM for its patent portfolio, not its handsets.
2. RIM will spin off its IP holdings and/or its logistics and solutions division into a separate company. Northern Securities’ Sameet Kanade has suggested this option, saying it will let “shareholders decide where they want to participate. Do they want to participate in RIM’s IP (intellectual property) growth or do they want to participate in RIM’s operating growth?”
3. Google’s purchase of Motorola will throw the Android ecosystem into chaos, giving RIM time to catch up, regroup and pick up the pieces. Sterne Agee’s Shaw Wu writes:
   

   We believe RIM could benefit from potential disruption in the Android ecosystem as Google integrates its acquisition of Motorola Mobility and there could be a potential eruption of a civil war. In addition, from our conversations with carriers, they would love to see a stronger No. 3 supplier in mobile phones. And the reason is that many of them are growing concerned with the growing dominance of Google and Apple. We believe Windows Phone will benefit as well but RIM is arguably in a stronger position given its independence and incumbent position as the No. 3 player.

4. RIM will enter into a strategic partnership with one of the other big tech companies, likely Microsoft or Samsung, perhaps as a minority partner. Morgan Keenan’s Tavis McCourt says that “long term, everybody is looking for a dance partner and RIM had better find one.” The only question is whether RIM’s co-CEOs can be convinced to change their strategy.

I want to say that I’ve arranged these scenarios in order of increasing likelihood. Even at its current depressed stock price, RIM’s a considerably more valuable company in terms of market cap than Motorola Mobility when Google made its offer: if RIM sold at a similar 63% premium (a stretch, but investors who bought in at $70/share might feel entitled to ask for it) it would cost more than $23 billion. That’s a lot of escarole for an independent company that would be even harder to integrate than Motorola will be for Google.

Moreover, RIM’s patents aren’t as valuable as Motorola’s. Falcon Portfolio’s Michael Mahoney says, “I don’t think [RIM's] patent portfolio is likely to cover the most cutting-edge technology. The breadth of what Motorola has developed is orders of magnitude higher.” Even if patents are the money-maker du jour in the tech industry, that limits the appeal of either a sale or a spinoff.

For the Motorola purchase to seriously damage Android, Google would have to seriously mishandle it by trying something both radical and obviously dumb. Google is sometimes one and sometimes the other, but rarely both at once. And while Googlezola presents plenty of radical options, it doesn’t present many that are so radically dumb that they would disproportionately benefit RIM rather than, say, Microsoft.

A strategic partnership could be the smartest move. Since analysts and other reporters don’t seem to feel inhibited, let me try my hand at fan fiction. Since Windows Phone 7, competition between Microsoft and Blackberry is much more indirect than the days of Windows Mobile. RIM and Microsoft already have an agreement making Bing the default search and map option on Blackberries. Suppose they expand that partnership, bringing more Microsoft software to Blackberry, folding or merging Documents To Go into Microsoft Office, adding games, Facebook, Skype and more.

RIM and Microsoft work together with developers to build for both platforms and Windows 8 (ending RIM’s flirtation with Android). They collaborate on backend support. Blackberry helps get Windows phones more certifiably secure than any other consumer smartphone, opening the entire line up to government and enterprise. Maybe Blackberry doesn’t run Windows Phone 8 — although if you told me a year ago that Nokia would abandon Symbian for Windows Phone, I wouldn’t have believed it — but they’re otherwise as interoperable as you could imagine. In turn, Microsoft invests a little bit of money and chases off the sharks.

Again, I’d like to say that something like this is the most likely outcome. But after this year or even just this month, it’s clear that with RIM, anything is possible.