Back on 23rd Jan 12 (See RIM needs ‘seismic change’), RIM’s founders Mike Lazardis and Jim Balsillie were ‘replaced’ (they still stayed on the board though…) as joint CEO by Thorsten Heins. I was highly critical that doing nothing other than spouting platitudes about “improving RIM’s process execution, boosting marketing and improving communications with customers” was nothing short of a long suicide note. I said that RIM needed ‘seismic change’ and needed it NOW. Or alternatively it should be sold.
Last night RIM announced pretty awful Q4 figures with a dive of 21% in the number of Blackberry handsets sold (v Q3). RIM sold 11.1m devices v Apple’s 37m iPhones in its latest quarter. RIM now has <5% of the US smartphone market. Revenues of $4.57b were well behind expectations and a loss of $125m was declared vis a profit of $934m in Q4 FY11.
RIM has at last woken up. A major review is now to be undertaken. Indeed RIM made a pretty startling announcement that it was to withdraw from the consumer market to concentrate on the business sector (and, interestingly, the BYOT sector…). Balsillie is leaving the Board as are several other long-serving executives.
Heins admitted that selling RIM was now open to consideration.
This is a car crash that has been in the making for years. Blackberry could and should have done something about it years ago. It still has a fantastic mobile email system. If that is the only thing you are interested in on your smartphone, it is still the best (in my view…) But, of course, in every other area it is a very poor ‘also ran’. It didn’t have to be like that. It could have built a great smartphone based on the rock of its email system and its physical keyboard.
Now I just can’t see a route to recovery. Even a sale looks more unlikely with each dismal quarter. I had put Microsoft down as the logical ‘enterprise’ suitor. But they are more likely to do that with Nokia now.