TORONTO —Research in Motion shares fell after the company replaced co-chief executives Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis with an insider who said he sees no need for radical change as the company struggles to compete with Apple.
Thorsten Heins, a chief operating officer who joined RIM four years ago from Siemens, will replace the pair in the chief-executive post effective immediately, RIM said in a statement. Director Barbara Stymiest will take over as chairwoman as the two also cede their co-chairmen positions. Lazaridis, who founded RIM in 1984, will become vice chairman; Balsillie will remain a board member without any operational role.
Balsillie and Lazaridis showed little sign of being able to stop Apple and Google’s gains as the Silicon Valley companies remade the mobile-computing market with devices such as the iPhone and iPad. Waterloo, Ontario-based RIM’s stock tumbled 75 percent last year as sales slumped, and the two men, both 50, drew investor criticism for releasing products without the features necessary to compete.
RIM fell 8.5 percent Monday to close at $15.56, the biggest drop in a month, after Heins told investors on a conference call that no “drastic change” is needed. Shares had rallied as much as 7.6 percent in early trading before the call.
“Heins is a product-execution guy. He’s not a visionary,” said Ehud Gelblum, a New York-based analyst at Morgan Stanley. “Heins has to give people a reason why they need a BlackBerry. It’s going to be very difficult for him.”
RIM, once the most valuable company in Canada, has lost 89 percent since its peak in 2008, when soaring BlackBerry sales pushed its market value to more than $80 billion. Last quarter, sales fell about 6 percent to $5.17 billion.
Lazaridis, Balsillie and Stymiest all said the move to step down was the men’s decision and not a response to outside pressure.
The shift is a result of the company’s evolution and the introduction of new technologies that will give RIM more competitive products, Lazaridis said.
“This marks the beginning of a new era for RIM,” he said in an interview. “It was a bit of a bumpy ride. We’ve done it as best we could. Thorsten is the ideal choice. He has the right skills at the right time.”
11% Research in Motion’s share of the global smartphone market sank in the third quarter, down from 15 percent a year earlier, stung by customer defections to the iPhone and Android handsetsSource: Gartner
