Thorsten Heins takes over as RIM's CEO

IDG News Service - Research In Motion's co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie have quit after a tumultuous period at the company, which saw intense competition and long services outage at the maker of the BlackBerry.

Thorsten Heins is the new CEO of Blackberry maker Research in Motion.

An insider, Thorsten Heins, the company's former chief operating officer, has taken charge as president and CEO, to implement the succession plan previously submitted to the board by the former co-CEOs, RIM said in a statement late Sunday.

Lazaridis and Balsillie have also quit their positions as co-chairmen, and director Barbara Stymiest takes over as the new chairman. Lazaridis, a founder of the company, will become vice chairman, and Balsillie will remain a board member.

Lazaridis will also chair a newly created "Innovation Committee". He will work closely with the new CEO to offer strategic counsel, provide a smooth transition and continue to promote the BlackBerry brand worldwide, RIM said.

Heins joined RIM from Siemens Communications Group in December 2007 as senior vice president for hardware engineering and became COO for product and sales in August last year. Lazaridis and Balsillie have been under pressure to quit from investors for some time.

The new CEO did not indicate any immediate change in the direction of the beleaguered Canadian company, which is facing stiff competition both in its smartphones and tablet business from devices running the Android operating system, and Apple's iPhone and iPad products.

"It is Mike and Jim's continued unwillingness to sacrifice long-term value for short-term gain which has made RIM the great company that it is today. I share that philosophy and am very excited about the company's future," Heins said in the statement in a reference to RIM's purchase of QNX Software Systems, whose operating system is positioned to be the basis for BBX, the next platform for RIM's tablet and smartphones.

The company is recruiting a new chief marketing officer to work closely with its product and sales teams to "deliver the most compelling products and services".

RIM saw the share of its BlackBerry drop to 2.9% in the third quarter of 2011, from 3.0% a year earlier, according to research firm Gartner. The BlackBerry operating system had a 11% share of smartphone operating systems, down from 15.4% a year earlier, even as the share of mobile phones running Android doubled. Android gained because of a weaker competitive environment, and the lack of exciting new products on alternating operating systems including RIM's, Gartner said.

A service outage in October that affected users in North America, Latin America, and its EMEIA (Europe, Middle East, India and Africa) region also dented the company's image, despite efforts by the company to placate consumers with free apps worth more than $100. Consumer Law Group, a Canadian law firm, said in October it had filed in the Quebec Superior Court a proposed national class-action lawsuit against RIM in connection with the service outage.