
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
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