New CEO at RIM… Yeah And?

It doesn’t seem like too many folks care one way or another than there’s a new CEO over at Research In Motion, makers of the ubiquitous Blackberry smartphone. Recently, co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie are no longer in charge, paving the way for Thorsten Heins, an executive from within the company. Putting a different person at the helm didn’t inspire much confidence, as stock prices still fell. Most folks believe that the same challenges that faced the company last year will be the same this year.

Generally, what ya wanna see when there’s a regime change at a company is that the person taking over is excited, has ideas, wants to go in bold directions, etc. Thorsten may prove to do that, but he certainly didn’t earn any cool points by making a statement that change wasn’t needed and then backtracking. To clarify, however, here is an excerpt of the conversation which can be found at Crackberry:

Kevin: On the topic of change, on the conference call you said, “We don’t think significant change was needed.” Obviously there is a lot of change already in progress with the migration (from BlackBerry OS) up to the BlackBerry 10 platform, but I’m seeing that the media and financial community are not in total agreement about that message. Can you clarify and explain why you don’t think you need change?

Thorsten: I think this got into a little bit of the black and white zone. I was talking about drastic or seismic changes. What I was trying to address was that there was some suggestion that RIM should be split up or should even be sold. My true belief is that RIM has the strength and the assets that we can really succeed in this market.

That’s great news, but we all know that Wall Street analysts and the like can be a finicky bunch, so actions will speak louder than words. The new guy is gonna have to start getting buddy buddy with developers. It’s no secret that’s been a huge part of the success of Google and Apple when it comes to smartphones. He’s also gonna have to really push to get Blackberry 10 out faster than “2nd half of this year”. You’re already behind in the 4th quarter, the last thing you need to do is start running the football and losing precious time. And according to Marguerite Reardon from CNet, “If RIM is serious about a come back, it needs to go back to its roots. This means keeping aspects of its devices that its core audience love: superior QWERTY keypad, security and strong messaging services. At the same time the company needs to add elements it has been missing: a good touch screen, easy-to-use interface, plenty of apps, and a good browser.”

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