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As you will have no doubt have read, founders Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie have been replaced as joint CEOs of RIM by Thorsten Heins. The markets were ‘so impressed’ that RIM shares dived another 9% today - so that’s now down c80% in a year..
Nobody thinks that turning RIM around is going to be easy but most would not have started with the statement that ‘no seismic change’ is contemplated. Bluntly, RIM only has two options. 1) Sell the company 2) Plan seismic change – and quickly. Although perhaps we weren’t too kind to Stephen Elop at Nokia, he was bold enough to announce ‘seismic change’. It might just work. Windows Mobile does get good reviews from my friends. Anyway, if Option 2) doesn’t work for Nokia, Option 1) is still open – possibly with Microsoft. But effectively doing nothing other than spouting platitudes about “improving RIM’s process execution, boosting marketing and improving communications with customers” is nothing short of a long suicide note.
Trouble is I still actually care! I am still a Blackberry user and (in my humble view) there is still no better mobile email system. Try as I can, most of the typing I do on any touch screen comes out as gibberish. But, the ‘problem’ is that in every single other aspect, Blackberry is an also ran.
