“Research In Motion Ltd. shook up its top management, replacing co-Chief Executive Officers Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, who guided the BlackBerry maker for two decades and struggled to compete against Apple Inc.,” Scott Moritz and Hugo Miller report for Bloomberg.
“Thorsten Heins, a chief operating officer who joined RIM four years ago from Siemens AG, will replace the pair in the CEO post effective immediately, RIM said in a statement,” Moritz and Miller report. “Director Barbara Stymiest will take over as chairman, as the two also cede their co-chairmen positions. Lazaridis, who founded RIM in 1984, will become vice chairman; Balsillie will remain a board member without any operational role.”
Moritz and Miller report, “The shakeup comes after Balsillie and Lazaridis showed little sign of being able to stop Apple and Google Inc.’s gains as the Silicon Valley companies remade the mobile-computing market with devices such as the iPhone and iPad.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We’d say that Amateur Hour is over, but WTF Thorsten Heins? And, HTF is he going to reanimate that pancaked mess of Apple roadkill?
He’s not. Nobody is going to save beleaguered RIM. Forget Thorsten Heins; Francesco Schettino would have been the perfect choice to helm the voyage RIM is on.
One good thing: Now DCW only needs one signature when they file for bankruptcy or sell off the antiquated, hopelessly outmatched disaster.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers”Fred Mertz,” “Opportun,” “Orwell Kowalyshyn,” “Terry P.,” and “Jai Gill” for the heads up.]
RIMM will be dead within 12-18 months, even sooner than that if they’re sold off. Sorry guys, but the ship is going down and nothing is going to stop it now.
2 little, 2 late.
SUPRISE! SUPRISE! RIP YOU ARROGAGNT MOTHER FKRS!
Is it really necessary to use that kind of language?
I dunno, maybe? These were the guys who were SO CONDESCENDING to Apple, with their whole “Amateur hour is over” thing and countless comments by the former co-ceos.
I feel like I get where iJAH420 is coming from…
Thank you. I normally am very reserved when commenting on subject matter of this nature. HOWEVER, I have no empathy, nor sympathy for RIMM in this particular case. I have been belittled for 25+ years by the likes of such ARROGAGNT corporate ignorance across the PC spectrum and time has come to say GOOD RIDDANCE!
RoadKill!
This new guy is a fu**wit of the first order.
RIM is heading for the rocks.
Other than he took the CEO position, what do you base your comment on?
On the outside chance he turns things around, you’re gonna look like a putz.
They are three years behind on doing this….just like everything else they’ve done lately.
They should have appointed Fred Mertz as the new CEO and be done with it. At least he can trawl news sites for RIM related news like he does Apple news for MDN, and in so doing reinforce the notion that RIM isn’t dying by supplying upbeat news.
I wouldn’t take the pay cut.
Funny RIM analogy
I wish SJ was here to see this.
SJ saw this happening long time ago.
Sorry to see them go. They were the best thing for Apple. Now, If only Steve Balmer and remain in place for as long as it takes.
RIM had a chance. It’s gone. They could have gotten out ahead of the iPhone in 2007, leveraged their dominant position in the enterprise and innovated their way into an unbreakable lead. Instead, they just laughed at the iPhone and kept selling the same Blackberries they’d been selling for years, with only incremental advancements.
It’s a textbook case of the Innovator’s Dilemma and it ends the way all such cases do, with the company being kicked out of the market it once dominated.
(BTW, the reason Apple post Jobs hasn’t fallen victim to the Dilemma it its willingness to abandon successful products when they see something better come along.)
——RM
“….same Blackberries they’d been selling for years, with only incremental advancements.”
iPhone 4 –> iPhone 4S.
I reset my case. Apple is the new RIM.
It’s not possible to continually break new ground at the rate you start a new product at. There is a product experience people expect, and unlike Andriod competitors, it is absolutely not healthy to put out a new product that is miles better than the one just released.
If a company really does it’s homework, the new product has a strong and comprehensive base, and when released to the market will be around long enough to improve while the market makes it’s way to your product.
What you have to be willing to do at some point (usually several years or more down the road) is know when it’s time to take a sharp turn in the road and completely reinnovate the product. Apple has done it in the past, and trust me, it takes a CEO who is really smart and with big kahuna’s to pull that off. (check out netflix to see what happens when you don’t know how to kill a product and bring out a new one)
You made no case. The 4S is superior to the 4 along nearly every important vector, from power to antenna to incredible new camera to new graphics and world chip with CDMA and GSM it is only similar to the 4 in terms of the beautiful correctly sized screen and cosmetic outward appearence.
Then on top of all that we have SIRI.
A 4.5 inch screen iPhone!! that would be a real innovation according to Balmy
By the way, I don’t know much about legal terms, but I think it should read “I rest my case” and not “I RESET my case”. unless we are talking about those plastic covers that protect iPhones.
3G/3Gs = incremental changes.
4/4s = significant internal changes, no change to external appearance ∴ difficult to call.
iPhone 5 likely to have significant form-factor changes.
What you seem only too keen to ignore is that in only making significant form-factor changes every other model Apple avoid pissing off all the 3rd-party manufacturers who would otherwise incure significant re-tooling costs on an annual basis.
But then, you’re too obsessed with the bloody screen size to look at issues that affect the wider iPhone ecosystem.
Try extracting your head from your anus once in a while.
MacDailyNews, that is the BEST, FUNNIEST take I’ve ever read. Funny cos its so damn true.
Agree with everything except the Schettino reference. Come on MDN, they’re still pulling bodies out of that boat. Ever heard the phrase “too soon”?
Agreed. Edward Smith, perhaps?
In RIM’s press release … Mr. Heins said, “BlackBerry 7 has been well received. We are very excited about PlayBook 2.0 and BlackBerry 10. The reception of our products at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show was encouraging.”
Well received by who?
Thorsten Heins! For as long as it takes!
Canadian-English translation problem: by “reception” he meant “wake”
As far as invoking Captain Schettino’s name this is a post PC world so no more political correctness. To relate RIM to this boat crashing on the rocks and the new captain at the wheel at RIM is fairly accurate. The people going down on that boat are the investors as RIM keeps hitting the same old rocks and expects different results. They are underwater, the stock is in the toilet the rats just left the boat for a dry and floating lifeboat. Keep an eye out for these guys are about to dump so much stock so fast that the only way it would have any value is if it comes on a roll and is soft and absorbent. However given these guys track record their TP would have splinters and feel like high grit sand paper they just can’t help it.
It’s a shame as I once loved my blackberry but like anything else you need to innovate and add new features and functions. They just did the same thing over and over and refused to do what needed to be done. It’s really hard to piss off a loyal user base but those blackberry users are for the most part all gone.
Co captains we are headlining towards the rocks what should we do just do the same thing we always do those rocks will move.
From the Italian Coast Guard tape: Listen Schettino you little shet, go back to your ship. Stay there until everyone else is off the ship.
Buh-bye! Tools.
Both were bad seeds. Mike Lazaridis was too arrogant to acknowledge the vast changes in the mobile market, and often came across as a rambling idiot. And Jim Basillie was too focused on obtaining an NHL team. No leadership. No direction. Half-baked products. That new OS better be smoking good.
Tangent: While reading this, I recalled when Steve Jobs attended an earnings call in 2010 and stated something along the line of “We’ve just passed BB in unit volume, and I don’t see them catching us anytime soon.”. I thought that was a ballsy statement, considering RIMM and the market at the time. But damn, SJ was spot on.
RIM is not the only one. Nokia, Moto, S/E, Dell, HP…
You can’t sell a good piece of hardware with crappy software systems and integrated data management with other devices.
The world has moved on.
“…Apple AND Google Inc…”?
How did Google ‘remake’ the market, precisely?
A more accurate assessment would be that Google, unlike Rim, have been more adept at slipstreaming in the market Apple remade. Albeit with some ‘inside knowledge’ of what was coming
Which makes the article’s somewhat confusing suggestion that the iPhone and iPad were in some way Google devices all the more perspicuous (if inadvertently), given that these were, indeed, the devices that Google have tried to copy.
Adhere to what they see your expertise inside the works of art you’re. The sector desires of a lot more enthusiastic internet writers just like you that will not be scared to say how they think. Everyday abide by ones coronary heart.
You truly make it seem so simple along with your business presentation on the other hand obtain this particular subject to get definitely something which I believe I would personally under no circumstances realize. It seems too difficult and very huge for me. Now i am taking a look onward in your future publish, I most certainly will seek to master it!
I am not positive the place you happen to be getting your information, however great topic. I can spend time mastering a lot more or figuring out more. Appreciate wonderful facts I’d been hunting for this info for my mission.
I had been recommended this web site by means of my relative. I am will no longer specific if it create will be created by way of your pet since who else understand like highly accurate somewhere around our trouble. You are wonderful! Cheers!
Hello there, You might have completed a terrific occupation. We’ll surely reddit the item plus individually recommend to my buddies. I am positive they are benefited from this web site.
I’m going to at once clutch the rss while i will not to locate the mail ongoing web page link as well as e-newsletter service. Accomplish you’ve got every? Kindly allow myself identify so that I could truthfully signed up. Thank you.