Ousted half-CEO Lazaridis to step down from beleaguered BlackBerry board on May 1

“BlackBerry co-founder Mike Lazaridis, who was ousted from the co-CEO role about a year ago, will be retiring from his current position on the board effective May 1,” Shara Tibken reports for CNET. “After giving up the co-CEO position, Lazardis has served as vice chair and a director of BlackBerry. Last week, he launched a $100 million fund, Quantum Valley Investments, to work on commercial applications for breakthroughs in quantum science.”

Tibken reports, “During Lazaridis’ last year as co-CEO and co-chairman, BlackBerry (then named Research in Motion) suffered a sharp slowdown in growth as its phones failed to make a dent in the smartphone market dominated by Apple and Samsung. And BlackBerry’s attempt to breach the tablet market with the PlayBook stumbled early. If that wasn’t enough, BlackBerry also delayed the release of new products and suffered a major global service outage, the worst in the company’s history, in October of 2011. Current CEO Thorsten Heins stepped in to replace the co-CEOs, while Lazaridis moved to the vice chairman role.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take:

Getting out while the getting is bad.

On May 1st, he should clam up, turn beet red, and just stomp out of the place fuming like he did from interviews during his last year of guiding the dump into the toilet as half-CEO.

Buh-bye, amateur.

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