Slash Lane
Shares of RIM stock have been sinking as its market share has dwindled, while Apple's iPhone and devices running Google Android have found tremendous success. Those struggles, according to Reuters, have put RIM co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie in the hot seat.
Northern Securities analyst Sameet Kanade has asked RIM to consider dropping Balsillie as a co-CEO, while Charter Equity analyst Ed Snyder characterized both Balsillie and Lazaridis as "stuck in the past." And Bing Gordon of Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins said the National Hockey League's Toronto Maple Leafs are more likely to win a Stanley Cup for the first time in more than 40 years than RIM is to build a "number one phone."
An anonymous investor at a top-30 fund also reportedly said they would "likely support" the influence of an activist like billionaire Carl Icahn, who could invest in the company while its value is low and institute big changes.
Icahn is labeled as a "prime candidate" because of previous work at Motorola, in which the company's mobile phone business was spun off and found success.
In April, RIM made its first attempt to counter Apple's iPad with the release of the BlackBerry PlayBook, though consumer interest in the launch of the device was categorized as tepid. Soon after, the company opted to pre-announce sales that came in lower than expected, and to warn investors of delays for new BlackBerry product launches.
Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs predicted RIM's struggles last October in a surprise appearance on his company's quarterly earnings conference call. In that quarter, Apple's 14.1 million iPhones sold easily bested the 12.1 million BlackBerries sold by RIM.
"We've now passed RIM," Jobs said. "I don't see them catching up with us in the foreseeable future. It will be a challenge for them to create a mobile software platform and convince developers to support a third platform."
Questions about RIM's leadership come soon after another major player in the mobile space, and rival of Apple's — Microsoft — has been the subject of public debate over its own chief executive. Last week, influential hedge fund manager David Einhorn made waves when he called on Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to step down.
Einhorn, president of the $7.9 billion Greenlight Capital Hedge fund, characterized Ballmer as "the biggest overhang on Microsoft's stock." He also called for Ballmer to "give someone else a chance" to lead.
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William Gallagher
Andrew Orr
Christine McKee
Mike Wuerthele
Malcolm Owen
65 Comments
I never understood why there were co-CEOs. That tells me true lack of direction and management. RIM isn't going to disappear of course, but they are in some trouble.
With Apple's iPhone now significantly outperforming Research in Motion's BlackBerry line and the company struggling to respond, some investors have called for a change in leadership at the Canadian smartphone maker. ...
The irony here is that RIM is basically a great company with a lot of great ideas and a lot of good people working for them. They make a simple mistake about predicting where the market will go, and sat on their laurels for a single season and now they are basically done.
Microsoft on the other hand is a big crap hole full of idiots that seem to know very little about the market and have no good ideas other than copying the next guy. They have been blundering around and sitting on their laurels for over ten years now. They have also failed at almost every project they attempted in that same time period.
Yet somehow Balmer is golden and Microsoft is rarely talked about as a company in any kind of trouble even as RIM is taking the bullet for a few short term mistakes.
The Co-CEO thing is a bit ridiculous but even despite that, RIM has better management and smarter, more capable people running it than Microsoft does in almost every way.
I never understood why there were co-CEOs. That tells me true lack of direction and management. RIM isn't going to disappear of course, but they are in some trouble.
They founded the company together, so if one had more power than the other he'd cry 'no fair' just like the Google boys did before
"primate candidate"
There's always been the saying that "Two heads are better than one." I guess that also applies to the guillotine chopping block. It's a really sad thing when you've started a company, ran it successfully for years and then after hitting some rough patches the board of directors say that you're no longer wanted. That must really hurt to the core. I can imagine that Steve Jobs felt the same way when he was ousted.
The BlackBerry line really seems to be somewhat outdated when compared to those slick Android smartphones with huge displays and fast processors. I'm certainly no fan of those button-laden BlackBerries and at a casual glance, they all look about the same to me. However, I still see a lot of people texting with them and I'm sure they're still in demand. I think it will be tough for any one company to tackle the Android onslaught except for Apple which has such a huge ecosystem and retail marketing strategy.
I hope that RIM can make some changes with the QNX OS and some new touch-display hardware. Perhaps the texting heydays are over and RIM needs to move on. Wall Street is giving RIM a very bad image in comparison to Android smartphones, so RIM is seriously getting stepped on. I feel certain the company is sound, but it's days of top smartphone market share is gone and it's high share price will never return, in my opinion.
Too bad for a decent company such as RIM. Wall Street only seems to reward the top market share holder and anything less than that is considered valueless. That's a poor way to keep an economy running smoothly.