Thorsten Heins, the new CEO of BlackBerry maker Research in Motion, told analysts Monday that despite a year of continual misfires the company is not in need of a “drastic” change.
Heins said on a conference call that the company had “hit a few bumps in the road” but is “stronger today for what it has gone through.”
The Wall Street Journal broke the news Sunday night that RIM’s co-CEOs, Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, were stepping down and Heins, one of two co-COOs, would take their place. Investors had been looking for a major change, unhappy after a year that seemed to only go from bad to worse.
Apple and Android phones have taken the smart phone world by storm, dropping RIM’s market share to just 11 percent.
In June, the Canadian company announced a quarter-to-quarter drop in revenue, starting a new trend of falling revenue and prompting 2,000 layoffs.
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RIM’s attempt at a tablet, the Playbook, has underwhelmed where the iPad and Amazon’s Kindle Fire have excelled.
Adding insult to injury, a service blackout in October rankled consumers around the world.
Now Heins is in charge of trying to restore momentum to a company that has had none for months, but he says there do not need to be “seismic” changes.
He stated his support for QNX, a new operating system that will be run on all phones.
Heins seems to believe a marketing overhaul is the biggest need.
"We need to be more marketing-driven,” he said in a conference call. “We need to be more consumer-oriented because this is where a lot of our growth is coming from. That is essential in the U.S."
Targeting consumers may be the only option as despite the change at the top, RIM’s shares dropped more than seven percent since the announcement.