The Verge - Turmoil at RIM: a new CEO, BlackBerry 10 delays, and buyout rumors

Former Blackberry co-CEO sells off entire stake in the company he helped build

2013-02-14T17:26:05Z

A document filed by BlackBerry today reveals that Jim Balsillie, who formerly served as co-CEO along with Mike Lazaridis, has sold off his entire stake in the company. As recently as last year, Balsillie held 28.6 million shares, a number that has rapidly plummeted to zero according to a regulatory filing. Balsillie and Lazaridis oversaw BlackBerry's meteoric rise in the mobile phone arena, but also occupied the top ranks during the company's stunning downfall.

For his part, Lazaridis has stayed on as vice chairman of BlackBerry — known as Research In Motion in the years he spent steering the company along with Balsillie. The fact that Balsillie has chosen to cut financial ties now, just as BlackBerry launches a comeback effort led by...

RIM's first patent settlement payment to Nokia is $65 million

2012-12-28T12:45:51Z

Last week Nokia announced that RIM would pay it a one-off fee and make subsequent payments as part of a patent licensing agreement. It's now emerged, thanks to an SEC filing spotted by AllThingsD, that the one-off payment was a lump sum of €50 million, or around $65 million. The fee has been recorded in RIM's financial books for the third quarter of fiscal 2013. We still don't know how much the future instalments from RIM to Nokia will be, but it appears the Canadian company is paying a fairly hefty price to settle its legal troubles with the similarly beleaguered Finnish giant.

RIM agrees to pay Nokia for patent licenses

2012-12-21T08:16:35Z

RIM has agreed to a patent licensing agreement with Nokia that includes a one-off fee and on-going payments "all from RIM to Nokia." As part of the agreement, the two companies will drop all current patent litigation. "We are very pleased to have resolved our patent licensing issues with RIM," says Nokia, "this agreement demonstrates Nokia’s industry leading patent portfolio and enables us to focus on further licensing opportunities in the mobile communications market." The precise financial details of the agreement were not made public, but the terms are similar to those agreed between Nokia and Apple last year.

The two companies have had numerous legal spats over the years, but agreed to cross-license essential patents almost a...

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency ends BlackBerry contract, will issue iPhones instead

2012-10-22T18:17:08Z

The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) has ended its agreement with RIM to provide staffers with BlackBerry smartphones and will instead offer its employees iPhones. Reuters notes that this move affects about 17,600 employees and will cost the agency about $2.1 million. The ICE has used RIM's products for eight years, but it claims that at this point, BlackBerry smartphones "can no longer meet the mobile technology needs of the agency." The group did look at Google's Android platform as another option, but it concluded that Apple's tightly-controlled ecosystem would best serve its needs. "The iPhone services will allow these individuals to leverage reliable, mobile technology on a secure and manageable platform in...

Microsoft and RIM battle for third place, but is four a crowd?

2012-08-24T14:15:06Z

RIM revs up: a new QWERTY phone, new software, and new ambitions

2012-08-15T14:00:40Z

In a meeting Tuesday in New York, Research In Motion CEO Thorsten Heins along with other executives discussed —and demoed — the future of the company.

It was a candid opportunity to hear Heins' plans for the future, discuss the challenges of the last few years, and see a first hand demo of the next iteration of BlackBerry phones. While the executives certainly have plenty of worries to focus on — like the fact that RIM stock prices have lost nearly 70 percent of their value in the last year — the lanky, impressively tall Heins was upbeat about the company's future. He believes RIM can begin to reclaim some of that lost marketshare in the US during 2013, and he seemed downright giddy about new technologies that users would see in...

IBM reportedly interested in buying RIM's enterprise services unit

2012-08-10T00:30:00Z

As the long wait for BlackBerry 10 devices continues, rumors continue to swirl that RIM may engage in some radical restructuring at some point — including selling off parts of its business. The latest comes from Bloomberg, reporting that its sources indicate that IBM has "made an informal approach" to acquire RIM's Enterprise Services unit. Apparently, the board rebuffed IBM's interest because it still wants to wait and see what will happen with BB10. That's the same attitude the board reportedly took with regard to selling off other RIM divisions, so it seems like the company is bent on getting BB10 out the door, albeit later than originally planned. Should things not go well there, we imagine that IBM could come knocking on RIM's...

BlackBerry exodus continues as prominent UI designer leaves RIM

2012-08-01T15:23:20Z

Hampus Jakobsson, who founded currently RIM-owned UI developer group The Astonishing Tribe (TAT), just announced that he has left RIM to pursue other projects. Jakobsson made the announcement in a tweet from TAT's account, saying he was "handing it over to others in RIM."