I was just reflecting on thor's tenor as ceo and there were really many warning signs from the start.
for example, he was an insider all along in a relatively senior position. how was he going to make a complete turnaround for the company back then if he was already partially responsible for it?
and then he said "there is nothing wrong with blackberry right now" when he took over the brusied ship. nuff said.
thirdly, he allowed mike to stay on the board. why woukd you want someone responsible for the decline of the company to still be in a position of considerable influence?
someone should have vetoed his appointment right from the start.
I was just reflecting on thor's tenor as ceo and there were really many warning signs from the start.
for example, he was an insider all along in a relatively senior position. how was he going to make a complete turnaround for the company back then if he was already partially responsible for it?
and then he said "there is nothing wrong with blackberry right now" when he took over the brusied ship. nuff said.
thirdly, he allowed mike to stay on the board. why woukd you want someone responsible for the decline of the company to still be in a position of considerable influence?
someone should have vetoed his appointment right from the start.
I am no longer a fan of Thor. However, the problems that brought BlackBerry to this positions go back years. While I have no faith left in Thor, he is not wholly responsible.
I am no longer a fan of Thor. However, the problems that brought BlackBerry to this positions go back years. While I have no faith left in Thor, he is not wholly responsible.
It's hard to be a fan of any higher ranking BlackBerry exec right now...
@Topic
Major Shareholders are partially to blame as well, yes.
Not for their trust in the beginning, rather for not booting out T.Heins far earlier than the moment BlackBerry is sold.
I'm not going to blame Thor so quickly, at least he launched a new phone and a new operating system. He is not the real problem of BBRY, Android is.
I posted a thread: android kills BBOS, the chart illustrates what's happened during those last three years. Can you believe Android in 3 years detains almost 80% of the market? Apple never exceeded 23%.
Thorsten Heins did a fairly poor job but I don't think anyone could have saved RIM (I am so peeved they changed their damn name), only delayed it and maybe kept the stock up a little bit for a little longer. But even in such a case I think RIM would have still struggled on, leading to the same predicament. When I saw he was an insider and COO to boot, in charge of exactly the problem areas, I knew nothing would change and posted about it back then.
IMO, too much emotion is tied to RIM, both internal to the company and to the market. Big respected Canadian company, highly recognizable symbol of the initial smartphone market (I dispute it invented them though), independent, status symbol as *the* corporate tool. It's a hard pill to swallow that you might lose all that and become perhaps just a small OEM or some such and RIM tried to stay RIM for far too long. I think many investors were caught up in the same emotion. Others got greedy and weren't experienced enough at speculating to get out in time.
Nokia and RIM were in almost the exact same situation at the same time but I don't think there was quite as much public furor about Nokia. OTOH, they swallowed their pride a lot sooner.