RIM CEO Thorsten Heins has wisely decided to ditch his “there’s nothing wrong with the company as it exists right now” talking point. During his remarks at RIM’s 2012 Annual General Meeting today, Heins said that while he was optimistic that his company could make a comeback, he was “not satisfied” with the state of the company and acknowledged that the “next several quarters will be very challenging.” Heins also identified three key reasons for RIM’s decline in the United States: The consumer appeal of iOS and Android, the rise of bring-your-own-device policies in corporate IT departments and RIM’s own lack of an LTE-capable smartphone. He said that the release of the BlackBerry 10 operating system in early 2013 would put the company back on competitive footing in all three of these areas.
Heins also reminded shareholders that RIM still had 78 million BlackBerry subscribers out there, meaning BlackBerry 10 will already have a strong user base when it launches next year. And finally, Heins said that the company’s strategy going forward was to release a smaller number of mobile devices to the market at a given time and said it would be primarily targeting the premium smartphone market with both its touchscreen phones and its phones that come equipped with full QWERTY keyboards.
