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Official statement from RIM on the leadership shuffle (Video)

Admin — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 03:29:50 +0000

Here’s the official statement from RIM about the leadership team, direction and focus – plus a 7 minute video that introduces Thorsten Heins as the new President and CEO.

“On the transition to CEO by Mr. Heins, Mr. Lazaridis said, “There comes a time in the growth of every successful company when the founders recognize the need to pass the baton to new leadership. Jim and I went to the Board and told them that we thought that time was now.”

January 22, 2012 21:39 ET
Research In Motion Names Thorsten Heins President and CEO
- Board Acts on Recommendation of Co-CEOs to Implement Succession Plan
- Mike Lazaridis Named Vice Chair of the Board
- Jim Balsillie Remains a Director
- Barbara Stymiest Named Independent Board Chair
- Prem Watsa Named Independent Director

WATERLOO, ONTARIO–(Marketwire – Jan. 22, 2012) – The Board of Directors of BlackBerry® maker Research In Motion (RIM) (NASDAQ:RIMM)(TSX:RIM) today announced that, acting on the recommendation of its Co-Chief Executive Officers to implement the succession plan they previously submitted to the Board, it has unanimously named Thorsten Heins as President and Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Heins was also appointed to RIM’s Board. The Board acted after conducting its own due diligence. Both appointments are effective immediately.

Mike Lazaridis, former Co-Chair and Co-CEO, has become Vice Chair of RIM’s Board and Chair of the Board’s new Innovation Committee. As Vice Chair, he will work closely with Mr. Heins to offer strategic counsel, provide a smooth transition and continue to promote the BlackBerry brand worldwide.

Mr. Heins said he looks forward to continuing to work with Mr. Lazaridis, globally recognized as a technology pioneer. He said, “Mike created a whole new way of communicating and I look forward to continuing our close collaboration.”

On the transition to CEO by Mr. Heins, Mr. Lazaridis said, “There comes a time in the growth of every successful company when the founders recognize the need to pass the baton to new leadership. Jim and I went to the Board and told them that we thought that time was now. With BlackBerry 7 now out, PlayBook 2.0 shipping in February and BlackBerry 10 expected to ship later this year, the company is entering a new phase, and we felt it was time for a new leader to take it through that phase and beyond. Jim, the Board and I all agreed that leader should be Thorsten Heins.”

Jim Balsillie remains a member of the Board. “I agree this is the right time to pass the baton to new leadership, and I have complete confidence in Thorsten, the management team and the company,” he said. “I remain a significant shareholder and a Director and, of course, they will have my full support.”
Mr. Lazaridis said that he decided to move from Co-Chair to Vice Chair of the Board in order to return the public’s focus to what is most important: “the great company we have built, its iconic products, global brand and its talented employees.”

Mr. Lazaridis added, “Thorsten has demonstrated throughout his tenure at RIM that he has the right mix of leadership, relevant industry experience and skills to take the company forward. We have been impressed with his operational skills at both RIM and Siemens. I am so confident in RIM’s future that I intend to purchase an additional million of the company’s shares, as permitted, in the open market.”

Mr. Heins said he believes that RIM has tremendous potential. He joined RIM from Siemens Communications Group in December 2007 as Senior Vice President for Hardware Engineering and became Chief Operating Officer for Product and Sales in August 2011.

“Mike and Jim took a bold step 18 months ago when RIM purchased QNX to shepherd the transformation of the BlackBerry platform for the next decade,” Mr. Heins said. “We are more confident than ever that was the right path. It is Mike and Jim’s continued unwillingness to sacrifice long-term value for short-term gain which has made RIM the great company that it is today. I share that philosophy and am very excited about the company’s future.”

Mr. Heins said that RIM has a strong foundation on which to build. “We have a strong balance sheet with approximately .5 billion in cash at the end of the last quarter and negligible debt. We reported revenue of .2 billion in our last quarter, up 24% from the prior quarter, and a 35% year-to-year increase in the BlackBerry subscriber base, which is now over 75 million.”

Mr. Heins said, “BlackBerry 7 has been well received. We are very excited about PlayBook 2.0 and BlackBerry 10. The reception of our products at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show was encouraging.”
He continued, “RIM earned its reputation by focusing relentlessly on the customer and delivering unique mobile communications solutions. We intend to build on this heritage to expand BlackBerry’s leadership position.”

Mr. Heins said that RIM has grown quickly. “As with any company that has grown as fast as we have, there have been inevitable growing pains,” he said. “We have learned from those challenges and, I believe, we have and will become a stronger company as a result.

“Going forward, we will continue to focus both on short-term and long-term growth, strategic planning, a customer- and market-based product approach, and flawless execution. We are in the process of recruiting a new Chief Marketing Officer to work closely with our product and sales teams to deliver the most compelling products and services.”

Barbara Stymiest, who formerly served as a member of Royal Bank of Canada’s Group Executive and has been a member of RIM’s Board since 2007, has been named the independent Board Chair. John Richardson, formerly Lead Director, will remain on the Board. Prem Watsa, Chief Executive Officer of Fairfax Financial Holdings, also was named to the Board, expanding it to 11 members.

Speaking on behalf of the Board, Ms. Stymiest said: “We believe that Thorsten is the right executive to succeed Mike and Jim. He has 27 years of telecommunications experience, including four years at RIM in senior management positions. As a Board, we have been impressed with his outstanding management skills, his leadership and his accomplishments within the company.”

Ms. Stymiest also expressed the Board’s respect and admiration for Messrs. Lazaridis and Balsillie, the company they built, and the steps they have taken to position RIM for the future.

“They created RIM, nurtured it, and in the process not only built an iconic brand, but literally pioneered the smartphone industry,” she said. “It is Canada’s largest tech company and one of the largest in the world.”

MobileSyrup.com

Thoughts from CES 2012

Admin — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 04:01:07 +0000

The lights never seem to dim in Vegas. Even at 4am, when the sun is slowly rising in the east, the city itself seems to be emitting some sort of warble, an obsequious challenge to sleep less and spend more.

CES itself is much the same. This is not an event for the general public, but the place for companies to show off their upcoming flagship products, and make business deals that affect everyone. With three main halls, each of which take hours to navigate in a confused haze of caffeine and hunger pangs, there is no end to the potential for great news reporting.

But it was in this environment that we spent four days immersed in tech, scurrying around talking with various representatives soaking up the what’s new. The feeling is a little like being drunk: you exist on adrenaline, fawning over the few important device announcements and then, once exhausted, continuing to wander the expansive fluorescent hallways like a zombie. But the genius is in the scale: there is a sheer surplus of material to write about — some good, some famously bad — but yet all very promising that someday, hopefully, will help the industry move forward.

Two mobile devices that were crowd favourites from CES 2012: the Nokia Lumia 900 and the Sony Xperia S. Both handsets are conscious evolutions of their existing product lines, but make thoughtful changes in ways that consolidate the individual components into a cohesive and attractive fullness. Both companies are coming at their prospective markets as underdogs: Sony is rebranding, removing the Ericsson from its name, and with it comes the potential for an important brand re-recognition. Nokia has a harder job: it has completely shifted its operating platform, and has a lot more to lose if its Windows Phone commitment doesn’t pan out.

But it will. It’s clear from the company’s reception throughout the show that Nokia has made its name important again in North America, and with it the Windows Phone brand. Sony, too, has been playing the mass-market consumer card, focusing on creating attractive products that don’t compete on “techs and specs,” but on overall design and performance.

Neither company, like so many of the underdogs at this show, will have an easy 2012. The clear mindset winner of the show – Samsung – is coming into the calendar year high on life, profit and market share. But it’s also clear they are not going stop innovating. Expect huge things from the company this year, from the next Galaxy phone to tablets and, perhaps more impressively, cohesive device interoperability. Samsung showcased a TV prototype in which you could use hand gestures to change channels, or your voice to search for content.

For Canadians, the relevant news was slim but good: we are getting the LTE Galaxy Note; the Lumia 800 and 710; the Xperia S. Many devices, like the Lumia 900 and Xperia Ion, US-exclusives for now, will most likely come to Canada later this year.

LG held a press conference to announce the LG Spectrum (Bell Optimus LTE) was heading to Verizon; we’ll see their full upcoming product line at Mobile World Congress in February. Meanwhile, HTC only had a small booth for the US-only Titan II. RIM showed off its fantastic-looking Playbook OS 2.0, but nothing new on the handset front (which was expected). Lenovo, Asus, Acer were all completely AWOL for Canadians, though Motorola showed off its RAZR MAXX that, if we’re lucky, will find its way north.

Mainly the show was a testament to how far the industry has come in such a short time; everything, from fridges to stoves to windows, are connected somehow to the internet, and the smartphone is the source of their power. As the “cloud” becomes fuller and more accessible, easier to use and less expensive, the smartphone will continue to be our ears, eyes and perhaps even our touch.

Thanks for following our coverage of CES 2012, and we’ll be back next year!

MobileSyrup.com

LightSquared: We need clarity from the FCC before we can raise more funds

Admin — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 18:31:18 +0000

LightSquared said that it has enough cash to operate through the first quarter of 2012 but it currently is unable to raise more money because of uncertainty from the FCC regarding the company’s interference problem with high-precision GPS receivers.

Speaking at a Deutsche Bank Securities Leveraged Finance conference, LightSquared CFO Michael Montemarano said that the company has been looking at its options and it can “extend the runway of cash” if it has too but so far has chosen not take those steps.

Nevertheless, the company is hopeful that it will get the clarity it needs soon. LightSquared CMO Frank Boulben said that LightSquared partner Javad GNSS has introduced a new precision device that doesn’t cause any interference. The company has completed the design and has 25 pre-production units ready for testing. Additionally, he said that another company is today announcing a filter that can be used with a precision GPS device to mitigate any interference and the filter will only cost . “We are now demonstrating that the issue can be solved quickly and at a low cost,” Boulben said.

Boulben also recently said that gear to solve the interference problem between the company’s proposed wholesale LTE network in the and high-precision GPS receivers could cost the commercial GPS industry as much as 0 million. (See related story)

Regarding the company’s agreement with Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S), Montemarano said that the LightSquared has two provisions it must meet. The first, which was to have a deployable 5×5 MHz block of spectrum, was supposed to be met in September but was deferred to December because of the interference issue. “Now we have to have a 10×10 MHz [block] by year-end or we go back to the table with Sprint,” he said.

However, Monemarano added that mutual success is important to both Sprint and LightSquared. “The relationship is important to both of us,” he said, adding that by working with Sprint on an LTE overlay, LightSquared is reducing the costs of building a greenfield network in half.

Interestingly, Boulben also provided some estimates of the cost difference between what a traditional wireless operator will charge for a gigabyte of data compared to what LightSquared anticipates charging its wholesale partners. Boulben said an operator charges around per gigabyte while LightSquared will be able to charge an amount in the “single digit per gigabyte.” He noted that low price leaves plenty of room for wholesale partners to resell the data to consumers and still make money.

Earlier this month LightSquared said it may choose to pursue legal action to make sure it can deploy its network if concerns regarding the network’s possible effect on GPS cannot be resolved. The company has been battling the GPS community, which has vehemently opposed LightSquared’s network and has argued that LightSquared is distorting the historical record to put itself in a more favorable light. The GPS industry argues that if LightSquared operates a nationwide terrestrial network in L-Band spectrum, that signal will overwhelm GPS receivers, especially for precision GPS devices, in adjacent spectrum. LightSquared, in turn, has argued that the GPS industry should have known years ago that that it would build such a network and that GPS device manufacturers did not properly install filters on their devices to block LightSquared’s signal.

FierceWireless

Unions’ Intense Lobbying Stops Republicans from Crippling NLRB

Admin — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 07:22:01 +0000

CWA and other unions Wednesday defeated an effort by Republicans on the Senate Appropriations Committee to prevent the National Labor Relations Board from carrying out its mission to protect workers against employers’ unfair labor practices.
CWA Union News

iOS 5: Wireless syncing, Twitter integration, Notifications plus ability to edit pics from your iPhone

Admin — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 19:28:27 +0000

Apple WWDC 2011 conference is on right now and finally there is some talk about iOS and Scott Forstall is on stage. He stated that Apple has over 200 million iOS devices “and that makes iOS the #1 mobile operating system. With more than 44% of the market…” We’re guessing that is everything such as the iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch.

-In regards to iPad number: sold 25 million iPads in the first 14months.
- In total there are 425,000 apps available, 90,000 on the iPad
- 14 billion apps have been downloaded from the App Store
- “iOS 5 is a major release”… 10 new features coming
- Notifications: “Notification Center”. Now you can get your notifications by simply swiping your finger down from the top of the iPhone (like the experience on Android)
- Twitter in iOS 5 is now fully integrated – in the apps our apps, within the camera and gallery and update the contact photos right from Twitter.
- Camera: They have added a lock screen shortcut feature plus editing pics from the iPhone
- Wireless syncing!! – Software updates are now over the air! (Finally!)
- “iMessage” (messaging client that supports iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch where you can send texts, photos, videos to your contacts contacts (kinda like BBM)
- iOS 5 is available today for devs but to the general public this fall. (iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4, iPad and iPad 2 and iPod Touch 3rd Gen)

Source: Thisismynext

MobileSyrup.com

zcallingcard.com » from

Top Canadian stories from the past week, plus other news from around the web

Official statement from RIM on the leadership shuffle (Video)

Thoughts from CES 2012

Top Canadian stories from the past week, plus other news from around the web

Top Canadian stories from the past week, plus other news from around the web

Top Canadian stories from the past week, plus other news from around the web

Top mobile stories from the past week

LightSquared: We need clarity from the FCC before we can raise more funds

Unions’ Intense Lobbying Stops Republicans from Crippling NLRB

iOS 5: Wireless syncing, Twitter integration, Notifications plus ability to edit pics from your iPhone