What to Make of RIM Appointing Thorsten Heins as CEO

It is a pretty big change for Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie to step down. During the conference call this morning RIM’s new chairman of the board Barbara pointed out that the appointment of Thorsten Heins was supposedly came from Mike and Jim. That is leading some to think that he is essentially a puppet for RIM’s previous CEOs but it is way too early to judge. On the other hand there are some things that he has made very clear.

• He thinks RIM is on the right course for success and does not need drastic changes to the strategy Jim & Mike started when they decided to acquire QNX 18 months ago
• He drives a BMW motorcycle which is part of his German heritage (I respect him just for that!)
• Thorsten believes that RIM needs to double down on consumers with marketing targeted towards them which they started with the Be Bold campaign. Hopefully a new CMO will be selected soon.

The most important part of Thorsten’s announcements as CEO was the fact that he plans on streamlining the R&D, prototyping, and release schedules. That means RIM will no longer try to innovate during the release cycle which is what has caused them delays in the past. He plans on enforcing accountability and deadlines and confirmed that PlayBook OS 2.0 is coming in February. I agree that this is one of the biggest changes that needs to happen at RIM. They need to drive changes to market faster than ever before. They can no longer do their old 18 months from announcement to release cycle. They need to deliver consistant solid results and focus on their strengths.

Hopefully Thorsten is the right guy to deliver on RIM’s promise! He definitely will have a busy 2012.

RIM's new CEO is willing to entertain BlackBerry licensing proposals

Running through this morning's conference call again, Research In Motion's shiny new CEO, Thorsten Heins, had a lot to say about about BlackBerry's large-scale strategic direction, particularly previous hints that they would be willing to license the operating system to other manufacturers.

"Now, on the licensing piece, I'm absolutely confident that BlackBerry 10 will prove itself as a platform. If there is requests coming towards Research In Motion to talk about licensing that platform to other companies, I will entertain those discussions, I will listen, I will assess the business opportunity for RIM, and if it makes sense strategically and tactically to go down that path, then I will make the decision together with the board. It's not my focus one. My focus one is strengthen RIM's business based on their integrated approach because there's not many companies out there that have this. One is the other fruit company that has it, and one is us, and I want to leverage this. This is a very, very strong asset to have. A former colleague of mine once said 'trust you're successful in business when you're in the nervous system of your customers'. You can translate this into 'you're successful when you have the biggest value contribution to your customer's business', and this is where BlackBerry is, and this is where I want to stay, and this is what I want to build upon."

It's certainly not news that RIM is willing to flirt with cross-platform arrangements, what with the Android player running on the BlackBerry PlayBook, and iOS support on the way in RIM's enterprise management console. Historically, RIM had even shoehorned most of the OS into Windows Mobile, and with the relatively recent Bing partnership, it wouldn't be surprising to see another cross-over emerge for Windows Phone. 

Still, Thorsten made a point to say that this isn't a high priority, and that he has a ton of confidence in BlackBerry 10 to be able to stand on its own, thankyewverymuch. What do you guys think - is there a chance at a BlackBerry Connect revival?