CEO says "nothing wrong" with RIM

 

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By Reuters

Posted on 3 Jul 2012 at 17:23

RIM's CEO Thorsten Heins has claimed there's nothing wrong with the company as it exists now, denying the BlackBerry maker is in a "death spiral".

RIM announced a steeper-than-expected quarterly operating loss and deep job cuts last week, saying its revamped BlackBerry 10 devices would be released early in 2013 instead of late this year and had "proven to be more time-consuming than anticipated".

Heins - who was named as CEO earlier this year - said RIM is facing very big challenges but would emerge successfully from the transition it is going through. "There's nothing wrong with the company as it exists right now," Heins told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). "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."

There's nothing wrong with the company as it exists right now

"This company is not ignoring the world out there, nor is it in a death spiral," Heins told the CBC. "Yes, it is very, very challenged at the moment — specifically in the US market. The way I would describe it: we're in the middle of a transition," he said. "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."

The delay in releasing the devices - RIM's best hope of stemming its eclipse at the hands of Apple's iPhone and phones using Google's Android software - confirmed the worst fears of analysts and investors.

The size of the loss, RIM's first in eight years, and the likelihood that sales will keep sliding into 2013, may severely reduce the company's options. RIM's announcement that it would slash 5,000 jobs, or 30% of its workforce, reinforced a widely held impression that the company could be in terminal decline.