This move makes sense and is well overdue in my mind -- at least from a consumer perspective. The Playbook was branded as the "BlackBerry Playbook" not the RIM Playbook, which was ridiculous IMO (and still is). But they've made the decision and recognize that the RIM name is probably unrecognizable to the consumer, but BlackBerry is. I'm fairly certain the rest of their offerings to business (ie. BIS or BES) are associated or under the BlackBerry name anyways.
Dropping the "RIM" name makes sense, although the timing is distracting
I don't know if I agree with you. I felt like there was quite a clear delineation between the RIM and the Blackberry brands and I don't get the sense that consumers were confused about the two. Also I feel like RIM would have been a good name to keep if they decided down the road that they wanted to licence their software services technology to other companies and keep those efforts separate from their consumer hardware division (aka "Blackberry").
For a long time, I agreed that the RIM parent company makes sense if their software services were being licensed out.
I'm making an assumption (and I think the rebrand supports this) that RIM/BB has made a conscious decision to be a consumer hardware company, that is their priority, and any software services are a value-add or in support of their hardware. While this comparison is weak, it's almost like how Apple can be seen as a hardware company and the iCloud is in support of it.
I do think the renaming was probably made in haste, to coincide with BB10's release
Dropping the "RIM" name makes sense, although the timing is distracting