Unable to Compete with Apple and Android RIM's Co-CEOs Step Down After 20 Years

[Phillip Swanson]

After more than twenty years leading Canadian communications giant RIM Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis step down.


RIM’s co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis (founder of RIM) announced yesterday that they would be stepping down from their respective positions marking the first change in the company's leadership since 1984.

Both Balsillie and Lazaridis will remain on RIM’s board of directors, but will vacate their co-chair positions with Lazaridis becoming the vice-chair and Balsillie becoming a normal director. Former COO Thorsten Heins will assume the role of RIM CEO, not exactly the most desirable job in the tech world right now.

It has been a rough go for RIM during the last few years. Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android handsets continue to outsell, out innovate, and simply out class anything coming out with the Blackberry label. The company is hemorrhaging users, money, and talent. Even their once lauded dominance in the enterprise sector has dwindled. RIM's lack of success is as much a lack of vision and innovation as it is stupid business decisions.

More damaging to current users and possible future users, especially in the enterprise sector, are the well documented service outages. Enterprise clients need stability, and if they can’t rely on RIM then Apple, Android, and the new Windows Mobile platforms begin to look even more enticing.

While the road ahead for RIM is rocky, the company did debut a much revised Playbook 2.0 tablet at CES this year showing the company still understands how to produce quality products. Newly appointed CEO Thorsten Heins emphasized the companies financial strength as well with little or no debt and more than $1.5 billion in cash at the end of the third quarter in a statement regarding his appointment as CEO.

Still, RIM’s decline has been nothing short of embarrassing and pulling the company out of this hole could take a Jobsian like turnaround, less RIM become the Hewlett-Packard of 2012. Hopefully RIM can remain relevant and start to put pressure on Apple and Android again. Consumers only benefit from a competitive marketplace as competition spurs innovation.

Source: Tech Crunch

[rabbit_]

Rim is nothing there going under just like Nokia bye bye rim

[blkeagle1]

Rim is nothing there going under just like Nokia bye bye rim

Uh, Nokia still has 40% of the world wide market share... iOS has 14%. I'm no Nokia/Symbian fan, but just sayin. I'm sure this will eventually though.

[bigboyz]

Wow! I saw it coming and wondered how long it would take..well here we are. I just don't understand? I'm a gadget freak and embrace technology for what it it. If you've been around cell phones for awhile as i have, then you know the blackberry was wanted by ALL at one time or another. I mean why didn't they just stick Android or Windows phone 7 in it?? Competition is good as its made android and iOS better..particularly iOS :] Guess we shall see where the new CEO steers this sinking ship..heave ho? haha!

[mortopher]

How they managed to stay at the helm that long is beyond me. They have displayed no vision or, at best, very poor vision for where to take that company for years.

[DQEight]

Saw this coming.

[realism]

RIM needs better engineers and a more innovative approach to the mobile device market. Their devices no matter of how new still lack features that other devices are getting right and the operating system is far from user friendly. With active sync becoming more popular, mostly due to the costs of licensing with BES, they sure need a new business plan. Hopefully this event will allow people with new & fresh ideas to take the reigns and steer the company into a different direction. We'll see they aren't in the red yet so don't count them out just yet!

[NegativeBeef]

RIM's collapse is inevitable. They will all jump ship, trust me.

[xFURxBURGERSx]

RIM's collapse is inevitable but they do still sort of have a good product. I've had each & every iPhone since day one of them coming out but I have always envied the hype of BBM. The phones were sort of cheap yet very unreliable & the young generation of kids wanting phones that are easily accessible have gone for them. BBM is the company's best feature they just lack vision in where to go with this technology. There touch screen failed so why not follow the technology of the iPhone & HTC its not hard to grasp for the tech giants! RIM is a sinking **** that with a LOT of inspiration can save thereselves from near disaster but it is only down from here at the moment! RIM will go nowhere if they drop blackberry altogether & it will just open a more demanded percentage on the hotly desired phone market.

[iPhoneThereforeIAm]

Let's face it, BB is basically a one-trick pony (messaging : BBM and email).
And that makes it a very vulnerable pony.
And whether the BBM outage/s were malicious or not, they were still an eventual inevitability.

It's known as putting all your eggs in one basket.
Only the delusionally optmistic would leave the entire fortune of a business model open to that kind of risk.

Textbook stuff really.

[2Jaze]

RIM could've seriously been a competitor....they need a new development team, basically.