Steven Mayen
Former RIM CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie
After a year plagued with distressing sales, an atrocious launch of a product and constant failed online service, Research in Motion (RIM) CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis have stepped down. Their successor is Thorsten Heins, a man who was taken in as an advisor for RIM five years ago and was appointed Chief Operating Officer of Product Engineering in June 2011. Also, Barbara Stymiest, a UWO and Richard Ivey School of Business alumni will replace Balsillie and Lazaridis as chair on RIM’s Board of Directors.
Many people know that Balsillie and Lazaridis reduced their salaries to $1 due to the company’s failing numbers over the past year. Don’t get it twisted, they were still making money from stock compensations and “bonuses”. This has actually become quite a common phenomenon over the past decade; many big-named CEOs have done it such as Google’s Eric Schmidt, Nvidia’s Jen-Hsun Huang and the late Steve Jobs.
Even though the past CEOs went with this drastic maneuver, it was more for a vote of confidence for the company. RIM’s stock fell to its lowest point just over a month ago. Although their stock prices have been consistently, although slowly, increasing since then, the CEO change had to happen. Even though Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis have stepped down, don’t expect them to be completely out of the picture, they did pick Heins to succeed them…
As a Western student, I can tell you one thing: we love our smartphones. Most students get more upset the moment their BBM stops working compared to when they get back a not-so-great exam mark.
We hold this love for our smartphones for many reasons. We use them to tweet, access Facebook, check WebCT, get e-mails and to use BBM… and we make the occasional phone call. The largest inconvenience that some students have had to overcome this year was not having BBM for a couple of days. Luckily, I made the switch to iPhone over the summer and never had to face this traumatic experience.
Heins’ promotion to CEO shouldn’t lead to any major changes at RIM. He’s already come out and said that he doesn’t plan on changing their strategy at this point. “[RIM's] a fantastic growth story and it’s not coming to an end. What you will see with me is rigour and flawless execution.”
That’s a lot of confidence from the man who just took over a company that’s gone down 75 percent in value over the past year… However, with the new Blackberry 10 operating system coming out, alongside the Playbook’s new update, Blackberry and RIM as a whole should be able to get themselves out of this situation. Heins plans to put a new emphasis on marketing, but what kind of difference will this make for RIM in the future?
