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Research In Motion (RIM) owes much of its success to two things: push e-mail and the QWERTY thumb-keyboard used in the majority of its BlackBerry devices. The successful implementation of the latter allows users to type messages at speedy clip. Well, it looks like the smartphone and mob-e-mail leader may be tinkering with this successful keyboard design. A design, along with the SureType keyboard/keypad hybrid used by smartphones like the BlackBerry Pearl, that have helped lead RIM to over 12 million users, a number it surpassed during the third quarter.

A recent filing with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, called "Angular Keyboard For a Mobile Communications Device," reveals the company may be developing a new version of its QWERTY keyboard—one with a slightly angled take on the traditional BlackBerry-typer design.

As you can see from the image above, the new keyboard concept angles the keys inward, with half the keys on one side and half on the other. The idea, apparently, is to make keyboards of future BlackBerrys more natural to use.

Here's what the abstract in the filing, called "Angular Keyboard For a Mobile Communications Device," has to say about the new keyboard:

Wireless handheld mobile communication device including a housing with a display above a keyboard exposed for user actuation. A length of the device is greater than the width.

Each key of a right-hand keyfield has a longitudinal axis oriented at a left-to-right inclined angle while each key of a left-hand keyfield has a longitudinal axis oriented at a right-to-left inclined angle from the vertical centerline.

A left boundary of the keyboard is located adjacent the left lateral side edge of the device and the right boundary of the keyboard is located adjacent the right lateral side edge of the device so that the keyboard spans a substantial entirety of the width of the device.

Interestingly, RIM may be using the same angular keyboard design for BlackBerry smartphones with touch screens, none of which exist yet, of course. Although rumor has it RIM's next-generation full-size BlackBerry, the 9000 series, may be the first to sport a touch screen; with a hardware-based keyboard, however.