Photo: The Wall Street Journal

Research In Motion (RIM) announced yesterday that it has replaced co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie with the company’s COO, Thorsten Heins. Immediate reaction saw US-listed shares climbed 4.1 percent in premarket trade but e27 sees more needed to bring RIM back to past glory.

Research In Motion’s (RIM) board has announced the appointment of RIM’s  Chief Operating Officer (COO), Thorsten Heins, as the new President and CEO of the company. The move was made on the recommendations from RIM’s co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie in their recently submitted succession plans to the Board. The move seems to have garnered investors’ approval as premarket trade of US-listed shares of the company saw a 4.1 percent increase. However, after Heins announced his plans for RIM that sees little changes being implemented, investors’ perception soured and sent the stock back down 8.5 percent.

Changes to RIM’s corporate structure

Photo: Gigaom

With Heins at the helm of the struggling BlackBerry maker, now ex-CEO, Mike Lazaridis, will chair RIM’s Board’s new Innovation Committee. Lazaridis will also relinquish his role as co-Chairman of the Board and will settle for Vice-Chairman. Jim Balsillie will remain on the Board as a director. Existing Board member, Barbara Stymiest, who formerly served as a member of Royal Bank of Canada’s Group Executive, will take on the chairmanship. RIM has also added CEO of Fairfax Financial Holdings, Prem Watsa, to the Board.

Heins plan of action

Thorsten Heins joined RIM in March 2007 from Siemens AG, where he last served as CTO of  the Siemens Communications Group. He was one of RIM’s two COOs, and before that, Senior Vice President for the Handheld Business Unit.

In a press release, Heins said that RIM has grown quickly. “As with any company that has grown as fast as we have, there have been inevitable growing pains,” he said. “We have learned from those challenges and, I believe, we have and will become a stronger company as a result. Going forward, we will continue to focus both on short-term and long-term growth, strategic planning, a customer- and market-based product approach, and flawless execution. We are in the process of recruiting a new Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) to work closely with our product and sales teams to deliver the most compelling products and services.”

In response to the Barclay Capital’s correspondent during the conference call and webcast on what are his immediate plans, Heins summarized them as marketing communications and execution. The recruitment of the new CMO goes in line with Heins’ marketing communications plans. In terms of execution, Heines pointed out that RIM had a history of “innovating while developing the product” which tends to disrupt the production process. He strongly supports the importance of innovation, but highlighted that it should be done in the early prototyping stages before the product is defined. Once the product has been defined, RIM should focus on execution.

Public opinions of RIM’s management changes

Investors and the general public opinions were mixed. Engadget’s take is that Heins is not enough to save the Canadian company. Engadget’s managing editor, Darren Murph, wrote, “RIM needs a shock to the system. RIM needs a reboot,” which a fair number of the tech community agrees. Lazaridis and Balsillie had allowed RIM to slip from having a strong hold of the smartphone market to something short of insignificant. The company lost 75 percent of its value in just 2011 alone.

However, in the press release, Heins said that the company still has a strong balance sheet. He quoted US $1.5 billion in cash at the end of last quarter with negligible debt, US $5.2 billion in Q3 revenues, up 24 percent, and a 35 percent year-to-year increase in Blackberry subscriber base, now over 75 million.

In order to survive against companies like Apple, Google and Samsung in the smartphone industry, RIM has to reinvent itself. Heins doesn’t seem to have plans that involves reinventing what RIM was and has been until today, a company with a slipping grip on the market. Everything still seems to bank on the acquired QNX OS to save RIM. Will this work? Even Yahoo! brought in former PayPal President, Scott Thompson, for a fresh look on how to set the company on the right path. We at e27 think bringing in an external talent would have benefitted RIM more than just an internal shuffle. RIM has got to rock the boat more to get moving in the right direction.