After an appalling year, RIM’s co-CEOs have resigned.
“There comes a time in the growth of every successful company when the founders recognize the need to pass the baton to new leadership,” says RIM co-founder Mike Lazaridis, who will take the title vice-chair, “I am so confident in RIM’s future that I intend to purchase an additional $50m of the company’s shares.”
Lazaridis’ co-founder and co-CEO Jim Balsillie says: “I agree this is the right time to pass the baton to new leadership. I remain a significant shareholder and a director.”
The new president and CEO is the co-COO, Thorstein Heims who joined RIM from Siemens Communications Group in December 2007 as senior vp for hardware engineering.
2011 was an awful year for RIM: Its shares fell by two thirds; Its PlayBook rival to the iPad flopped, selling only half of the 2m RIM had built; Its phones lost market share to Apple; It sacked thousands of employees; It Blackberry 10 phone was delayed for want of an LTE chip-set and its service suffered outages.