The applause flowed following question after question; the applauding wasn’t a reception for a thoughtful, insightful, or clever answer from the lot of executives gathered on stage but rather served as a barometer of the spitefulness of the question asked. A shareholder who took the microphone near the stage wished the CEO well, but remained “very critical” of the direction he was taking the company was met with a bout of particularly thunderous applause.
Welcome to the Research in Motion annual general meeting.
In the midst of the shareholding many gathered in an auditorium at Wilfred Laurier University was Mike Lazardis, a founder of RIM and former co-CEO. Mr. Lazaridis’ seat in the crowd, and not with the executives on stage, is a testament to the company’s downward direction over the last year: RIM’s shares have dropped nearly 90% over the last 18 months while its market share has been cannibalized by the likes of Apple and Android.
This reactionary shakeup, which saw the departure of co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, installed Thorsten Heins as CEO with board member Barbara Symiest assuming the position of chair of the board, which the ex-co-CEOs vacated.
Mr. Heins’ first big showing was in May at Blackberry World where he launched the Blackberry 10 OS.
In early July RIM announced that this device was to be delayed until 2013.
At the meeting, Ms. Stymiest did her best to quell frustration and marshall shareholders, while assuring the assembled crowd that the company’s board remains “very supportive” of Mr. Heins and his executive team.
“We believe the company’s executive team is well positioned to lead the company forward to face its current challenges and pursue the opportunities that lie ahead,” Ms. Stymiest said.
Although some analysts were expecting something of a coup-de-AGM from shareholders at the meeting, resistance was largely muddled and confined to activist investment firm Jaguar Financial.
Vic Alboini, CEO of Jaguar Financial, believes that RIM’s future lies in dividing the company up into separate entities.
“[The board] has to look at a break-up for the company into the handset business and the software and services platform, and a potential sale of either or both or private placement funding investments by giant competitors like Microsoft, IBM, or Facebook, “ Mr. Alboini told reporters.
“That will save the company,” he concluded.
The big surprise of the AGM wasn’t the instillation of a new board — as the previous board was re-elected — but the remarks given by CEO Thorsten Heins after he assured investors Blackberry 10 was on track.
Mr. Heins assured shareholders that RIM is working “around the clock” to ensure that it gets Blackberry 10 right. This was followed by a promise to cut costs, and streamline production, while building a device that tackles both QWERTY and the full touch screen experience.
“Blackberry already owns the QWERTY experience,” Mr. Heins said. “But we need more work on the full touch-screen experience.”
“I will not deliver a platform to market that is not ready to meet the needs of our customers,” he continued. “There will be no compromise.”
“I am not satisfied with the performance of the company over the past year.”
Tags: Blackberry 10, RIM
I think the CEO is useless. Keeps saying “nothing has to change”, “we’re doing fine”, “we’ll do fine”. The CEO is being paid way too much to deliver lip-service and broken promises. The CEO has to explain what RIM will do to attract consumers. “Wait for BlackBerry 10″ is saying nothing useful to consumers.
If anything, RIM has just shown the world why it is failing. All the “Changes” have done nothing but institute “More of the same” policies and will ensure a continued downward spiral of this once great company. Even if BBOS 10 turns out to be great, what are RIM’s plans to win back all those lost customers who have migrated to more well established and equally appealing platforms?
RIM let me put this as clearly as I can, no one is waiting! To make it worse all existing customers even with recently released handsets, the Torch for example, will be left out of BBOS10 further alienating your user base.
By the time BBOS10 is released it will have to compete with the likes of IOS6, Windows 8 Mobile & Android 5. Not to mention all the advanced handsets that are and continue to be released at a blistering pace specially in the Android powered environment.
“I will not deliver a platform to market that is not ready to meet the needs of our customers,” he continued. “There will be no compromise.” Nice statement but by the time RIM finally releases a desirable product, what customers will be left? Without an aggressive strategy to pull them back in RIM is dead in the water, if it isn’t already.