RIM's BlackBerry Winter

Research In Motion (RIMM) is slated to discuss its fiscal third-quarter results later Wednesday, but the two topics at the forefront of investors' minds likely won't be the company's sales or earnings for the period.

Instead, analysts and shareholders are more likely to focus on a couple of issues that will have more bearing on the company's future: its ongoing patent dispute with holding company NTP and the outlook for subscriptions to its BlackBerry email service.

The Ontario-based company did not field questions from analysts after lowering projected subscriber growth numbers last month, says David Schamens, a partner with Invictus Funds.

But recently on Wall Street, expectations that the company will finally settle its long-standing dispute with NTP have run high.

"My guess is -- and I'm sure everybody else is thinking the same thing -- that they're going to address the issue of a settlement" with NTP, says Schamens, who is negative on RIM's long-term outlook, but whose firm has no current position in RIM. "If there's nothing definite, I think people are going to be really hard on management."

Both issues are salient for investors for what they could bring to bear on RIM's stock price. The patent dispute with NTP could result in RIM being barred from offering its BlackBerry service in the U.S., its biggest market, or a settlement in the neighborhood of $1 billion.

Although the company has said that disappointing short-term subscriber growth won't affect expected results in the near term, continued subpar yearly subscriber numbers likely will.

At least on the income statement, RIM is expected to report a strong quarter. Analysts polled by Thomson First Call have predicted that RIM will post a profit of 65 cents a share for the just-completed quarter on $549.2 million in sales.