The two leaders of RIM, maker of the BlackBerry, resign

The two founders and co-CEO of the Canadian manufacturer of mobile phones Research in Motion (RIM), Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis , Canadian pioneers of smartphones with the BlackBerry, announced Sunday, January 22, they resign from office.

“In any successful business developed by the founders, there comes a time when we enter a new phase of growth and where it is time that the founders passed the torch to a new direction” , said Lazaridis, cited in a statement.

The two men will be replaced as CEO Thorsten Heins , 54, who was until now one of two directors of the company operating based in Waterloo, Ontario, and Chairman of the Board of Directors by Barbara Stymiest , one of the leaders of the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC). Ms. Stymiest, 55, since 2007 the Board of Directors of RIM, has chaired the TSX Group, owner of the Toronto Stock Exchange , and has held senior positions at Royal Bank of Canada.

Mike Lazaridis is with immediate effect, vice president of the board. “He will work closely with Mr. Heins to provide strategic advice, to ensure a smooth transition and continue to promote the brand BlackBerry in the world ” , the company said in a statement.

A bad year for RIM

RIM has lost 73% of its value at the Stock Exchange New York for a year, but Mr. Balsillie assured the Wall Street Journal that “it is not in response to this,” the decision to withdraw was made. The manufacturer of the BlackBerry underwent last year a series of setbacks. In October, a massive crash had made ​​several essential functions of the BlackBerry, including email, useless for three days, provoking the ire of users. RIM has been covered by a collective complaint .

The Canadian manufacturer also found in the center of pressure from several countries, including India and the United Arab Emirates , wishing to access the contents of the encrypted message. RIM has finally had to accept to install servers in some of these countries, which will allow investigators to access the content of messages transiting, or filter pornographic sites .

In terms of sales, the year has been difficult égaleemnt, with a delay of the launch of BlackBerry 10. The tablet PlayBook has had disappointing sales, with only 700,000 copies sold before the manufacturer decides to a massive drop in prices in November. RIM has had to donate again down in mid-December its earnings forecasts and turnover. Its market share fall to compete with Apple and Google, which equips many smartphones with its operating system, Android.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 24th, 2012 at 5:03 am and is filed under Technology. Tags: Blackberry, RIM You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.