RIM CEO: 'There's Nothing Wrong With the Company'

redletterdave writes "Research In Motion is in trouble. The BlackBerry maker has been suffering from an identity crisis for the last six months, which has resulted in mass layoffs, lots of job shuffling, dramatic drop-offs in market share and a quickly decaying portfolio for investors. But not according to Thorsten Heins! The newly-appointed CEO published an op-ed in the Toronto Globe and Mail on Tuesday, and also appeared on a radio program the same morning, to deliver one message: 'There's nothing wrong with the company as it exists right now.'"

Re:CEO's job is to sell...

[eln]

If it's obvious to everyone that a company has problems, the worst possible thing a CEO can do is say everything is fine, because it makes everyone think he's out of touch or not interested in fixing what's wrong. A good CEO would acknowledge the problems and present a high-level plan for fixing them. Whistling past the graveyard just makes things worse.

Something is wrong

[hawkeey]

Well I think we just found one thing wrong with the company: The CEO is delusional, a liar, or both.

Re:Well considering

[Penguinisto]

Some small differences:

Apple in 1997 actually had a viable roadmap, and succeeded. They also completely shook out the incompetent CEO once Jobs came back.
Microsoft in 2006 had a metric shitload of money still sitting in the bank, and a lock on the desktop.

It is possible for a business to come back from the brink, but RIM has shown absolutely no sign that they'll be a business that does so. All they really have coming up is BlackBerryOS 10, and even that's not much to trumpet, considering the far more fluid competition. RIM has given zero indication that they're working to break new ground, nor any hint of innovation in any area which could be considered as having future potential.

Long story short, RIM is circling the toilet swirl, and shows no promise of doing anything but getting sucked into the drain.

Re:Denial

[magarity]

I was reminded of the President saying the private sector is doing fine.

Re:We Are A PERFECTLY GOOD Company

[jhoegl]

The reasons our phones dont suck is because we have stuck with an out of reach business model whilst being probed from behind by other smartphone makers.
Want email AND contacts AND calendar? Well, then BlackBerry server is for you. It is another item your corporation has to sink money into and IT resources in.
What? Your phone lost connectivity to our server? Well, the fix is simple! A security wipe of the phone and a reset of your Blackberry server account by your IT will do the trick!
Nothing could be more simple!
Had an app you needed for work on the phone? Well, lets hope you backed it up, or your organization will have to pay for it again.

No other email service offers remote wipe like we do. Oh wait, they do? Well, we also offer encryption, wait they do natively?
What about our cool mouseball, no one else has that patented feature! Or our mini-thumb-track system, which is so annoying only the pains in your thumb know it is the real thing!
WEEEEEE!
Yeah... they were doomed when smart phones started supporting Exchange.

Re:Denial

[Anonymous Coward]

Because you believe the media's portrayal of RIM -- a company with no debt, $2 billion in assets, positive cash flow, extensive global market share in enterprise and military markets, and a newly reshuffled leadership and pared-down workforce -- as hopelessly crippled merely because they're losing market share in the US consumer market, an area where they have never been a stellar performer.

People said the same thing about Apple not that long ago, and that demise seemed at least as imminent, if not more.

That said, RIM has done a spectacularly bad job of marketing itself, which only fuels the fires of the doom-sayers. And the decision to delay the release of their new phones until after the gloriously profitable Christmas season because they want to make sure that the new OS integrates seamlessly with embedded systems in cars which don't yet exist has to be one of the stupidest strategic moves in modern business history, right up there with New Coke.

But RIM's self-defeating strategic, tactical, and marketing debacles aside, the reports of its death really are quite exaggerated.

Re:Denial

[narcc]

Don't confuse them with facts. The Slashdot parrots need memes. Facts tempt them to reason and form options, a sin of the highest order.

Try this instead: "Huur! Durrr! RIM is teh dead! Everything they've ever done sucked, lol!" -- That'll even get an AC a +5 Insightful.