Research In Motion (RIM) is shaking up their management team by ousting co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis. They are being replaced by Thorsten Heins, who has been RIM’s COO over the past four years. According to RIM, the management change is effective “immediately”.
RIM is the company behind the famous BlackBerry line of smartphones. Years back they set the standard for the use of smartphones in business communications.
But over the past year, we have watched, and reported, on the company’s spectacular bellyflop in the face of growing competition.
BlackBerry smartphones began losing much of their luster when Apple introduced the iPhone. Then Google’s Android OS also began making headway into BlackBerry’s market share.
In April last year, RIM launched the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. The tablet did pretty well on its first day, 300 off the price of their PlayBook tablet to try to goose sales in the face of growing competition from companies pushing cheap tablets. Reports on the success of that promotion are mixed.
RIM’s change of management did not come as a surprise to anyone. It’s been discussed for months. Balsillie had been at RIM for 20 years, and Lazaridis founded the Canadian-based company in 1984. So while it was expected, it is a pretty big shakeup.
The key for RIM’s future will be coming up with a product us shoppers (and business users) can get excited about. The long promised update for the PlayBook tablet will be available next month, according to RIM. And a new BlackBerry 10 operating system is scheduled to be launched late this year. But without a strong, innovative, eye-catching, product to lead the way, RIM has a tough road ahead.
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