The battered, beaten, and bruised shares of RIM have staged a major rally Wednesday, with their biggest single day gain in over half a year, rising over 5% to just under $8.00. The shares were up more than %13 to over $8.00 earlier in the day.

The goodwill towards RIM's stock amongst investors follows a report by analysts at Jefferies and Co. in which they speculate that Samsung is in negotiations with RIM, with one of two possible outcomes: Samsung could purchase the Blackberry maker outright, or at the very least, they may license the company's new OS Blackberry 10 for use in some of their future products.

"Samsung is considering ramping up its internal development efforts, licensing BB10 or buying RIM," Peter Misek, lead author of the report, stated in it. "Samsung is undecided."

Licensing BB10 wouldn't seem to make a whole lot of sense for Samsung, which currently uses Android in the majority of its smartphones, with great success. Android's dominant 68.1% share of the market last quarter could largely be attributed to the success of numerous Samsung phones running the OS, namely the Galaxy S3.

Still, Samsung is not exclusively tied to Android, and has plans to release new Windows 8 smartphones in the future, as well as releasing several phones with their own OS, Bada. There's certainly the sense that they don't want to be too reliant on Google's Android for their own success.

For that reason, purchasing RIM outright and using BB10 as the new standard for many of their devices may be a wise move, and is one the analysts think is the best option available for Samsung at present.

Whatever may happen, the analysts don't actually expect it to happen until early 2013, after BB10's launch. If the device succeeds, RIM will likely survive another few quarters on its own two feet. If not, a purchase by Samsung could prove to be a good fit for both companies.

What do you see happening to RIM in the next year? Should Samsung purchase the company, or stick with Android as their go-to OS? Let us know what you think.