Research in Motion had a tough 2011, their troubles are far from being over, and it has become such daunting task to lead the company in its current state, that co-CEOs, Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie have finally jumped off the sinking ship.  The company has announced the two are stepping down, while Thorsten Heins, currently RIM’s COO of Product Engineering, will take over as the new CEO; Heins believes he can stop the ship from sinking.

Both Lazaridis and Balsillie, who have been heading up the company for two decades, will still be on board though. Lazaridis will stay as vice chair of the board while Balsillie will be an ordinary director.  And they seem to be fully confident that Heins will be able to make things right. But it’s definitely not going to be easy for him.

Just to refresh your memory, the BlackBerry PlayBook turned out to be a painful experience for the company after it was released a couple of months back. They had to go through all sorts of trouble, including software glitches, price drops, massive competition, lack of apps and the list goes on. The big outage that came in October and the lawsuit over the use of BBX added to the agony. And the company’s market share is going down as iOS and Android are becoming more and more popular.

But still, Heins has high hopes. He believes that “everything is in place for the company to grow”. One of the first steps that he will be taking as the company’s head will be hiring a Chief Marketing Officer to make sure that the BlackBerry brand remains popular.

Check out the video to learn more about Heins’ ideas.

The post BlackBerry Down 2 VPs: Heins To Save Sinking Ship appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Research in Motion knows that its company has seen brighter days, but the recent BlackBerry outage has added plenty of fuel to the fire. While they are quickly working to fix the situation, RIM founder Mike Lazaridis has come forward with a public apology for the whole situation, saying sorry by way of online video.

“Since launching BlackBerry in 1999, it’s been my goal to provide reliable, real-time communications around the world. We did not deliver on that goal this week. Not even close,” said Lazaridis. “I apologize for the service outages this week. We’ve let many of you down…. You expect better from us. And I expect better from us.”

They say that they’re working around the clock to get the situation under control. “Normal levels” of service have been largely restored in Europe, the Middle East, India and Africa, but they’re still ironing out the kinks and you’re going to have some late messages trickling through. The good news, if you can call it that, is that Laziridis says compensating angry customers is “something we plan to address very soon. And that is a priority.”

Yes, RIM used to be a precious Pearl in the business community. However, they stopped making Bold moves and the rest of the industry threw Curve ball after curveball. They’ve got another Storm to weather and the future looks like it might get Torched. (Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.) Maybe the lack of BES support in the QNX-powered Colt isn’t such a bad thing?

Lazaridis admitted: “We don’t know why the switch failed and why service never failed over to another alternative switch.”
Someone spoke about compensation for RIM users, Lazaridis said it “was something we are thinking about. We have enjoyed a 99.97 uptime over the past 18 months.”

The video is up on ABC News if you want to check it out.

The post BlackBerry Down: Biggest Network Crash in History, Lazardis Apologizes appeared first on Mobile Magazine.