Okay, I’m convinced. RIM leadership is delusional. CEO Thorsten Heins gave an interview to CBC’s Metro Morning program, where the leader of the struggling smartphone maker made some puzzling remarks about the state of the company.
“There’s nothing wrong with the company as it exists right now… I’m not talking about the company as I, kind of, took it over six months ago. I’m talking about the company [in the] state it’s in right now. This company is not ignoring the world out there, nor is it in a death spiral.
Yes, it is very, very challenged at the moment — specifically in the U.S. market. The way I would describe it, we’re in the middle of a transition. All that is in the making, it’s in the works. This company is in the middle of it and I’m positive we will emerge successfully from that transition.” – Thorsten Heins, CEO, Research in Motion
To be fair, if I were the CEO of a dying company, I’d do everything in my power to paint the company in as bright a picture as I possibly could. The moment a CEO admits his company is facing a dire outlook, people both within and outside the company freak out.
That said, RIM’s outlook is exceptionally bleak. Looking to the company’s stock, it’s down 20% in the last 5 days, and a whopping 91% since 2007, the year the iPhone was released on an unsuspecting public. The company has slashed 10,000 jobs, representing over half of its workforce, and it’s delayed its savior BlackBerry 10 product to early 2013, claiming the software wasn’t yet ready for a public release. Meanwhile, iOS and Android continue their market dominance, gaining nearly 83% of the smartphone market as others stumble.
So while Heins attempts to paint a happier picture for ailing Research in Motion, both he and virtually everyone else out there know the company is not “fine as it exists now,” and even BlackBerry 10 can’t fully save them.
[via MobileSyrup, The Canadian Press]