RIM boots both CEOs, as market woes continue
Last year was not a very good one for RIM, maker of the BlackBerry smartphone line and the BlackBerry PlayBook听迟补产濒别迟.
Sales were down across the board, stock shares plummeted, and the BlackBerry steadily lost market share to Android and Apple. (Not to mention that whole three day outage thing.) Now comes news that聽Jim Balsillie and Mike聽Lazaridis, the current co-CEOs of RIM will step down, handing over the reins to Thorstein Heins, the current RIM chief operating officer.聽
In a joint statement,聽Jim Balsillie said he would remain a member of the RIM board, while Lazaridis said he would become the board's vice chair. Lazaridis pledged to focus on "the great company we have built, its iconic products, global brand and its talented employees."聽
So does Heins have what it takes to reverse the RIM slide? Maybe, Larry Dignan over at ZDNet, but it's more likely that Heins ascension will just lead to more of the same.聽"[T]he removal of Balsillie and Lazaridis looks like a move to appease shareholders for a bit without changing the strategy overall," Dignan notes. Moreover, what RIM needs now is a couple blockbuster products, and it's far from clear that anything close to blockbuster is in the works.聽
"The problem: RIM鈥檚 booth didn鈥檛 do all that hot at CES based on anecdotal reports. In fact, RIM had nothing to show. RIM touted its new PlayBook OS, but all that does is add the stuff鈥攅mail and calendar鈥攖hat should have been in the company鈥檚 first tablet," Dignan writes. Late last year, RIM the value of hundreds of millions of dollars in PlayBook stock, essentially an admission that the device was a market stinker.聽
Speaking to Bloomberg,聽Ehud Gelblum, an analyst for Morgan Stanley, that the slope would be steep for Heins.聽"Heins is a product execution guy, he鈥檚 not a visionary.聽Heins has to give people a reason why they need a BlackBerry. It鈥檚 going to be very difficult for him," Gelblum said.聽
For more tech news, follow us on聽. And don鈥檛 forget to sign up for the weekly聽.
