“Former Research In Motion co-chief executive Jim Balsillie sought to reinvent the BlackBerry smartphone maker with a radical shift in strategy before he stepped down, two sources with knowledge of his plans said,” Alastair Sharp reports for Reuters.
“Balsillie hoped to allow major wireless companies in North America and Europe to provide service for non-BlackBerry devices routed through RIM’s proprietary network, a major break with the BlackBerry-only strategy pursued by RIM since its inception,” Sharp reports. “The plan would have let the carriers use the RIM network to offer inexpensive data plans, limited to social media and instant messaging, to entice low-tier customers to upgrade from no-frills phones to smartphones.”
Sharp reports, “But the talks with carriers led to discord at the highest levels of the troubled Canadian company, and Balsillie resigned as a director soon after he stepped down as co-CEO. His former partner at the helm, Mike Lazaridis, still has an active role.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Continent-wide days-long service outages for everyone!
Too late, iCloud is here and will only get better and stronger. I’m forced to use Blackberry at work, but have a personal iPhone. There is no way I would want my iPhone to use the blackberry network. And guess which device I prefer to use. Sorry RIM, you are just too 20th century!
Which is why MS and RIM are a great one two punch for productivity.
Punch drunk for low productivity…
RIM blown its last chance of being relevant in new post-PC world. Except Jim, others in RIM still hold on to their pipe dream of making hardware. They can always ask Dell for advice.
Or Dell’s stooge, Rob Enderle.