Got A Blackberry? Could Be Looking At An Overhaul
January 23, 2012
How To Keep Up With The Changes!
Research In Motion, the maker of BLACKBERRY, is undergoing a major organizational and philosophical shake up. If you or your company is “married” to the technology, you best read on. Apple’s Iphone and IPADs are putting pressure on everyone in the mobile information market, and Blackberry is trying desperately not to go the way of …PALM. Remember the Treo? Watch the news on this subject, because it could render your OWN smartphone….an antique.
Blackberry’s CEO and top management have stepped down. BBC reports:
Here was a company that defined what smartphones were all about; that had cornered the oh-so-important corporate market; that had made serious inroads into the youth market with cheap entry-level smartphones. And then threw it all away in an orgy of poor executive decisions, lacklustre innovation, unkept promises in delivering new product and – the greatest sin of all – a total lack of understanding that its part of the tech industry was undergoing a fundamental shift.
First Apple, then Google managed to eat the Blackberry pie, and RIM did nothing to stop them. The company’s new boss will have to work very hard to keep RIM in the smartphone game.
Mr Lazaridis, speaking after the announcement, said he recognized things needed to change at the company.
“There comes a time in the growth of every successful company when the founders recognize the need to pass the baton to new leadership,” he said at a press conference at RIM’s headquarters in Waterloo, Canada.
“Jim and I went to the board and told them that we thought that time was now.”
Mr Heins started at RIM in 2007, having previously worked at Siemens Communications. He became the chief operating officer in August 2011, according to the company.
Mr Heins said: “As with any company that has grown as fast as we have, there have been inevitable growing pains”.
“We have learned from those challenges and, I believe, we have and will become a stronger company as a result.”
Barbara Stymiest, who has been on the board of RIM since 2007, has been made the new chairman, a post that Mr Balsillie and Mr Lazaridis also shared.
We Live And Die By Theses Phones!
Sharp decline:
Blackberry has suffered major setbacks in recent months.
Billions of dollars have been wiped from its market value as shares have tumbled 75% over the past 11 months and sales have dropped.
One of its latest offering the PlayBook tablet, a reply to Apple’s iPad, has not proven as popular as the company had hoped.
Larry Magid, a technology analyst with CNET, told the BBC World Service that Mr Lazaridis and Mr Balsillie had to go.
“Research In Motion, which once dominated the smartphone market, has been steadily losing market share both to the iPhone and iPad and the tablet area and the various android devices,” Mr Magid said.
“I think it was a matter of time before these two made the wise choice to step aside and see if anybody else can do better with the company.”
For those of you with Blackberry contracts, you may want to wait and watch before re-upping or changing out your equipment.
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I just changed over to iPhone after having BB for years!! I miss
my BB and want to back – but I am waiting.