Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis are out—but will a new CEO be enough to save RIM?
In an attempt to halt Research In Motion’s death spiral, executive duo Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis are being shoved out stepping down as co-CEOs and chairmen of the board—though the announcement hasn’t helped to buoy the stock so far. The man tasked with turning RIM around is Thorsten Heins, a former Siemens AG exec who, until yesterday, was one of two COOs at the BlackBerry maker. Investors had been trying to oust Balsillie and Lazaridis for some time, but it seems a nudge from super-savvy, super-rich Prem Watsa, the CEO of Fairfax Financial—which is now one of the RIM’s largest shareholders—is what sealed the deal. Now that the executive reshuffle is done, the question is whether Heins will prove himself a leader in his own right, or if he will simply follow Balsillie and Lazardis’s, er, playbook. Read the entire story [Globe and Mail] »
The physical kbyroaed is certainly a nice thing to have, but I found the navigation to be the biggest benefit. Once you’ve figured out how far you have to move the scroll wheel and when to press it, it becomes almost instinct. I could launch the SMS application from the home screen, type out a message much quicker than using the touch interface.Each to their own though. I appreciated your commentary about the slide out kbyroaeds, I’d long suspected they were the work of the devil!Your boyfriend has certainly tempted me, suddenly I wouldn’t mind having a low end Blackberry either! :D
The iPad and the PlayBook are young, they will grow up. What iPad needs? It needs more hardware, like USB, HDMI, and of cosure, FaceTime. What Playbook needs? Well, it just need more tablet apps, that’s why iPad? triumphs; without the App Store iPad doesn’t exists. The tablets will evolve.This is only a pic, of the future tablets.