It has been a tough year for RIM. The BlackBerry PlayBook has not seen much success, its co-CEO structure buckled under intense pressure as the company appointed Thorsten Heins as the new CEO, and its next-generation operating system has been delayed and renamed. We've rounded up all the dark tidings in one spot.
Turmoil at RIM: a new CEO, BlackBerry 10 delays, and buyout rumors
Research, no motion: How the BlackBerry CEOs lost an empire
Research In Motion, whose BlackBerry phones pioneered wireless email, no longer holds the commanding heights in the smartphone market. With Android, iOS, and even Windows Phone gaining market share, the Waterloo, Ontario, company finds itself in a battle for relevancy. The past year has been especially hard on the once-innovative RIM, but it may be at a turning point. Or the beginning of the end.
Last April, Mike Lazaridis sat in a BBC studio, holding his company's future in his hands: a...
US General Services Administration shifting some employees away from BlackBerry
RIM's loss of favor among US government agencies continues as the General Services Administration, which procures goods for other agencies, has announced that it plans to move some of its 17,000 employees from BlackBerrys to iOS or Android devices. The GSA is also testing a program to allow employees to use personal smartphones or tablets on its secure servers. Because the agency is often emulated by other groups, any move away from the BlackBerry platform could augur a larger governmental...
Alleged BlackBerry 10 images leak: widgets, new icon tray, and more
RIM has already gone on record saying that BlackBerry 10 phones won't be shipping until later this year, but some leaked photos may be giving us an extended look at the company's much-hyped new OS. Crackberry has several pictures, which were reportedly culled from a presentation by one of RIM's ad agencies on how to better position the company's future campaigns. They show off a number of new UI elements, including an updated icon tray with search, camera, and call buttons, quarter-screen...
US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration drops BlackBerry for iPhone
After years of being the go-to device for US government agencies, the BlackBerry has just lost a major federal customer. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has announced that it will be replacing some of its employees' BlackBerrys with iPhones and will get rid of its RIM secure email servers by June. More surprisingly, the move is actually an economic one: NOAA chief information officer Joe Klimavicz says that the decision is due to pressure to cut operating costs for the...
BlackBerry App World stats: six million daily downloads, higher profitability than Android
Alec Saunders, RIM's VP for Developer Relations, used the BlackBerry DevCon Europe stage today to "bust a few myths" about the state of the BlackBerry app ecosystem. Firstly, he took issue with the suggestion that BlackBerry users aren't using apps, telling us that there are now over six million daily downloads from the BB App World, totalling 174m per month, for an overall tally of over two billion. On a per-human basis, that's 30 app downloads per BlackBerry user per year. The second point...
RIM chairwoman Barbara Stymiest says board shakeup isn't over
In an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, RIM’s new chairwoman Barbara Stymiest made clear that she is planning more changes to the director lineup in the future. Investors such as Jaguar Financial Corp., a merchant bank specializing in undervalued companies, have long criticized RIM — most recently for the continued presence on the board of ex-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, insisting that their replacement at the top with Stymiest and new CEO Thorsten Heins isn’t enough....
RIM handing out free BlackBerry PlayBooks to Android app developers
The BlackBerry PlayBook launched at $499, was cut to $199, then $99 for employees, and likely has a successor on the way, so you'd think the story might be over, right? Well, it's now available for the low low price of free to Android developers who register and submit an app to BlackBerry App World by February 13th. A tweet by Alec Saunders, RIM's VP of developer relations revealed the offer, with developers simply needing to email the name of their app to developeroutreachprogram@rim.com....
If RIM wants to fix the BlackBerry brand, it's time for some demolition
Unless you've been living under a rock, you probably know that Research In Motion announced last week that it's replaced dual-CEOs Mike Lazardis and Jim Balsillie with the heretofore unknown Thorsten Heins. The news came on the heels of recent (and very public) questions about the leadership of the company, as its marketshare continues on a steep, downward path.
I've been watching and listening as plans for the next stage of RIM and the BlackBerry brand unfold, both via stated intentions from...
RIM's Mike Lazaridis calls giving up CEO role 'very hard'
In a varied interview with The Record on Friday, Mike Lazaridis recounts his nearly 30-year career at Research In Motion, leading up to his departure last week (along with co-CEO Jim Balsillie) to make way for newly-installed chief Thorsten Heins. Every indication in the past couple years has been that Lazaridis was reluctant to give up control of the company that he co-founded — he basically confirms that in the piece, saying that "Stepping aside, as a founder, after 27 years, I would be...
RIM CEO: 'I run the company,' 80-90 percent of US BlackBerrys running older OS (update)
New RIM CEO Thorsten Heins is continuing his media assault, speaking to The Wall Street Journal about his plans for changing RIM. While his earlier comments were all about continuity, lately Heins is backpedaling a bit and emphasizing some changes that will come now that Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis aren't running the company anymore. On that front, Heins says that the board is behind him "1,000 percent," but that doesn't mean he's going to follow the exact same path as his predecessors:...
RIM CEO: BlackBerry is a differentiated product, Android OEMs 'are all the same'
In an interview with CrackBerry, RIM's new CEO Thorsten Heins has clarified his recent comments about the company's strategy for the near future. One of the major quotes from Thorsten's first comments after becoming CEO was that RIM doesn't need drastic change, which many have interpreted to mean he'll keep the same course as already set by his predecessors, Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis. That was our reading of the matter, too, but Thorsten explains that what he meant was that he doesn't...
BlackBerry PlayBook, Curve refreshes leaked, London coming in Q3
BGR has posted slides from what appears to be RIM's 2012 roadmap, and if the details are accurate, we're looking at refreshes for the PlayBook, and new Curve 9220 and 9320 models. Rumors of the PlayBook's revamp have been swirling, and the leaked roadmap shows a new model with a 1.5GHz dual core chip, HSPA+, and NFC. The new Curve models are reported to have a dedicated BBM button on the side, a 2.44-inch display with a resolution of 320 x 240, 512MB each of RAM and internal storage, and an...
RIM's new CEO: who is Thorsten Heins?
As RIM announced last night, the company is hoping to stem its precipitous decline with a change of leadership, appointing former Chief Operating Officer Thorsten Gerhard Heins to the position of CEO. Heins, who joined RIM the same year Apple released the first major BlackBerry competitor, has said he is "excited" to take charge of the company. But what has Heins done so far, and how might his background shape RIM's future?
The RIM executives have never been particularly public figures, and...
RIM is open to licensing BlackBerry 10, confirms new CEO
There wasn't a whole lot of news to come out of RIM's conference call that formally introduced Thorsten Heins, but the new CEO did reveal that the company was open to licensing the BlackBerry 10 OS to other manufacturers. Heins is open to the possibility "if it makes sense strategically and tactically," but he's not making it a focus for RIM — the company will still focus on its own products, much like "another fruit company," said Heins. With BB10 not expected to launch until the end of...
RIM CEO Thorsten Heins: 'I can't wait to see' BlackBerry 10
RIM has posted a video of its new CEO, Thorsten Heins, talking about the company, his goals, and the upcoming BlackBerry 10 platform. He discusses his desire to finish products, promising to deliver the PlayBook 2.0 OS update on time. Heins also focuses on the need to focus on the consumer with powerful marketing.
On BlackBerry 10, that "new platform," Heins says that it's "unheard of" for a company to create a new platform within one and a half years — though he also says that he "can't...
WSJ confirms BlackBerry PlayBook 'revamp' in the works
In its report detailing the corporate shakeup at RIM, the Wall Street Journal also seems to confirm that the company is hard at work on an update to its PlayBook tablet. The article doesn't specify whether this is the previously-rumored 10-inch Black Forest tablet or something else altogether, but the wording certainly suggests a hardware update. Along with the first BlackBerry 10 phone, the Journal says the new tablet is one of the company's "two biggest projects," so hopefully we'll be...
RIM: Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis step down, co-COO Thorsten Heins is the new CEO
It looks like the shake up everybody has been expecting at RIM has finally come to pass. Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis have each stepped down from their co-CEO positions amid growing turmoil in the company and fears it won't be able to rebound itself in time. They are replaced by one of RIM's two COOs, Thorsten Heins. Additionally, another board member, Barbara Stymiest, has replaced them as chairwoman of RIM's board. Lazaridis is now the vice chairman on the board and Balsillie also...
The long road to BlackBerry 10
Last week at CES, RIM unveiled new features and functionality in PlayBook OS 2.0, which is due for a public release in February. Although much more polished than the initial release, we found that it still lacks certain features — including core advantages like BBM — that we would expect to see on a RIM tablet.
Yet the most important feature that PlayBook OS 2.0 lacks is a wide variety of quality apps. To find out how RIM plans to fix that, we sat down with the man tasked with ensuring...
RIM reportedly hires Goldman Sachs 'to explore strategic options'
Once again, rumors of a RIM shakeup are circulating now that Fox Business is reporting that the firm may have hired Goldman Sachs "to explore strategic options." Back in December, reports emerged that Amazon was interested in acquiring the BlackBerry maker, and then the Wall Street Journal added that Microsoft and Nokia considered a joint purchase as well, but neither deal came to fruition. At this point it's uncertain what might happen to the company; it could still get acquired by a...
RIM replacing Balsillie and Lazaridis as chairmen of the board, Financial Post says
There's been no shortage of stockholder (and customer) discontent directed at RIM in the past year, and needless to say, the names of the longtime co-CEOs — Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis — occasionally come up in conversations about leadership changes. To help quell investor rumblings in mid-2011, the company announced that it was appointing an independent committee to review its leadership structure; one of the points of contention was the dual role of the co-CEOs as co-chairmen of...
WSJ: Pressure intensifying on RIM's co-CEOs
RIM is just over a month away from the expected release of an "independent committee" report on whether or not the co-CEO team of Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis is a viable structure for the future, and the pressure appears to be intensifying on the pair. A report at The Wall Street Journal cites anonymous sources who contend that RIM's board is not properly governing the company, instead deferring to Balsillie and Lazaridis in too many instances. The source says that in board meetings, Jim...
RIM faces another trademark lawsuit, this time for 'BBM'
If RIM's sudden change from BBX to BlackBerry 10 in the wake of a trademark lawsuit left your head spinning, it's time to set it right again to properly take in yet another trademark lawsuit. BBM Canada, a group that provides consumer analytics and intelligence to broadcasters and has been using the "BBM" name since 1944, is in the midst of an ongoing lawsuit with RIM over the name that began way back in August, 2010. BBM Canada's CEO Jim McLeod told The Globe and Mail that his group...
WSJ: Microsoft and Nokia also casually considered jointly buying RIM
Amazon casually considered a bid for troubled BlackBerry maker RIM this summer, and apparently it wasn't the only one. Now, the Wall Street Journal's anonymous sources report that Microsoft and Nokia "flirted with the idea" of teaming up to buy RIM, too. The Journal suggests that this wasn't anything more than a simple idea that came up at one of the regular meetings between senior executives from all three companies — perhaps it could have even been a joke — but it's still pretty crazy...
Amazon considered buying RIM this summer
According to Reuters sources, Amazon looked into a purchase of RIM this summer. Amazon hired an investment bank to review a possible merger, but never made a formal offer. The details are muddy, but apparently RIM turned down Amazon before talks could get too heated, and has turned down other offers as well, with the board preferring to use existing internal assets, like BBM, and perhaps some restructuring (and of course, new phones) to turn the company around. The fun little twist here, of...
$1.7 million in BlackBerry PlayBooks stolen from an Indiana truck stop
RIM can't catch a break. Last Thursday, a truck carrying 22 pallets of BlackBerry PlayBooks (estimated to have 5,000 units) was stolen from an Indiana truck stop while the driver was busy eating and taking a shower. With no tracking device on the vehicle, there's little word on the thieves or where they're headed, although a local police spokesman has named Miami as a popular destination for stolen goods. The police believe that up to five suspects may be involved, and say they might have...
RIM: no BlackBerry 10 phones until late 2012
RIM's full name may be Research in Motion, but that motion's looking pretty slow right about now. The company's conference call to discuss the earnings it reported today included the devastating news that there won't be any BlackBerry 10 phones until late 2012. You'll recall that the BlackBerry London device that leaked out last month was also rumored to be launching in Q3 2012, so this new statement from RIM is an official confirmation of that speculative roadmap. More specifically, the...
RIM reports fiscal Q3 earnings: profits down 71 percent on $5.17 billion revenue
RIM announced its third-quarter earnings today, and it's not a pretty picture. The company reported earnings of $265 million — 51 cents per share — for the quarter, down 71 percent from $911 million from the same quarter a year ago. The number isn't all about declining smartphone sales, though — it includes the $485 million hit the company took thanks to unsold PlayBooks, as well as a $54 million charge from the worldwide outage it suffered this fall. There is one small bright spot:...
BBX is now BlackBerry 10, likely due to BASIS lawsuit
If you were to choose a name of an important, new mobile operating system upon which you were pinning the future hopes of your beleaguered company, you would probably make sure you chose one that wouldn't become the target of a lawsuit that could require you to change the name. You also wouldn't be RIM, as its official @BlackBerryDev Twitter account has announced that the "BBX" name has been replaced by "BlackBerry 10."
The move comes tonight in the wake of a US court decision in Albuquerque,...
Analyst: BlackBerry Playbook is an 'albatross'
Analysts are starting to respond to RIM's $485m loss on the BlackBerry Playbook, and the outlook is not positive. Bloomberg Businessweek outlines a compelling theory of the burden the Playbook places on RIM: it's a necessary evil that RIM can't afford to simply kill (like HP did with the TouchPad) because it's the only device RIM offers that runs its next-generation BBX OS. At the same time, massive price cuts mean that RIM is losing significant money on every Playbook it does manage to sell....
Basis sues RIM over BBX trademark infringement
RIM's next-gen operating system, BBX, hasn't had a very good run so far: co-CEO Mike Laziridius failed to give many details during BlackBerry DevCon, the PlayBook 2.0 OS on which it is based has been delayed until 2012, and now RIM is facing a lawsuit over the name itself.
The lawsuit comes from Basis International, which has used the "BBx" name to describe its own operating system since 1985 and also holds a trademark on the name. Three days after Basis complained directly to RIM about the...
BlackBerry Tablet OS 2.0 delayed to February 2012, won't include BBM
There might be a light at the end of the tunnel for RIM, but the BlackBerry PlayBook won't see so much as a shadow this year. The company just announced that the new BlackBerry Tablet OS 2.0 won't arrive until February 2012, much less the firm's high-flying next-gen operating system, BBX. What's more, this revision of the Tablet OS — currently in developer beta — still won't have native BBM messaging on board, leaving the slate somewhat crippled without a paired BlackBerry smartphone...
RIM faces legal complaint over 'BBX' operating system name
Last week at BlackBerry DevCon, RIM unveiled the new name for its next-generation operating system, BBX. The very next day, it faced a potential lawsuit over the name from Basis, International — which has its own, trademarked operating system called "BBx." Basis has sent a cease and desist letter to RIM asking the BlackBerry maker to stop using the name. In a press release, Basis CEO Nico Spence called attention to the fact that its BBx OS works on multiple platforms and is therefore...
BlackBerry service down in parts of Europe and Africa
As if RIM hasn't had enough problems on its hands, BlackBerry users across the world are reporting complete BIS (BlackBerry Internet Service) outages. The issues seems to be isolated to Europe, including the UK and Ireland, and Africa, with hundreds of users reporting no email, BBM, and web connectivity. (The US saw a similar outage in September, but it was confined to just BBM service.) RIM 's UK team has confirmed the outage with a tweet stating that they are investigating the issue. We'll...
BlackBerry PlayBook WiMAX release canceled for Sprint (update: LTE PlayBook still coming)
After announcing it for a summer release early this year, Sprint has now shelved the WiMAX version of RIM's BlackBerry Playbook, saying that "it’s an interesting concept, it just hasn’t caught on with business customers as much as [RIM] would like." Indeed, PlayBook sales haven't been overwhelming by any measure -- and without a clear show of consumer support, it doesn't seem like a wise business decision for carriers to be devoting resources to launching additional versions of the same...
RIM to lay off 2,000 employees, shuffle executives
RIM said it would lay off some employees last month after announcing disappointing Q1 sales and earnings, and it looks like judgement day is here: the company says it's axing some 2,000 jobs around the world. That's slightly more than analysts expected, and it'll bring RIM's employee count down to about 17,000 total -- something Waterloo says is a "prudent and necessary step" after having experienced an "extended period of rapid growth." That's the polite way of saying the company's gotten...
RIM staves off shareholder revolt, forms 'independent committee' to examine executive structure
Waterloo continues to be a font of corporate strangeness today, as RIM announced that they're forming a "committee of independent directors" whose mandate will be to study RIM's executive structure -- specifically looking into the powerful roles that Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis play as both CEOs and board members. The move was designed to fend off a motion from Northwest & Ethical Investments L.P. to demand RIM change the co-CEO structure it defended so vehemently earlier this month. The...
RIM responds to purported open letter from 'high level' employee
Earlier today BGR published a letter purportedly from a "high-level RIM employee" written to co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie. The anonymous letter went through a litany of problems plaguing the company, from software missteps to managerial issues to a fundamental failure to put the consumer experience ahead of engineering concerns. In all, the points sounded quite a bit like our own concerns over a strategy that feels like it's a year too late. BGR says that they've verified the...
RIM doth protest too much: the earnings call breakdown
We just listened in to RIM's quarterly earnings call to see what co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis had to say about the their disappointing financial numbers, product delays, and layoffs coming later this year. The feisty CEOs mentioned several times that people "on the outside" might not really understand what's going on inside RIM, so they laid it all out for us, citing a very familiar-sounding "transition period." Sounding more than ever like the Palm of yesteryear, they defended...
RIM's latest earnings call: 500K PlayBooks shipped, layoffs coming
The press release for RIM's fiscal Q1 2012 earnings call just hit the wires; by all appearances, there's not a lot to celebrate. The top question on everyone's mind is the PlayBook's retail performance, of course, and it's nothing to write home about: RIM is claiming 500,000 units shipped in the quarter -- the model's first quarter of retail availability. Again, that's the number shipped, not sold, and considering the number of PlayBooks I regularly see on store shelves, I would imagine that...
BlackBerry World: Now Wait for Last Year
Earlier this week, Research In Motion held its annual, major event -- BlackBerry World -- and made a handful of announcements about where the company was headed. The first wasn't entirely a surprise; RIM introduced the latest in a line of handsome -- if utilitarian -- smartphones, dubbed the Bold 9900. The device is an attractive, powerful handset that puts the classic BlackBerry QWERTY keyboard alongside a high-res capacitive touchscreen. The Canadian phonemaker also brought Microsoft's...
