On Tuesday, Thorsten Heins will make his first public appearance as the chief executive of Research in Motion (RIM) annual meeting. The once upon a time hugely successful smartphone manufacturer, has been on a downward spiral for at least a year now.
Reports suggest that the stocks of company known for its BlackBerry smartphone have fallen 95 percent since 2008. The quarterly report of RIM shows that the company suffered a $158 million loss. To top it all, Heins announced that the release of the new BlackBerry 10 and other phones is delayed. The New York Times suggest that the company is vulnerable to more than just disgruntled chiding, but can very likely face a number of lawsuits from shareholders.
Jean Louis Gassee, former President of Apple's products division and software founder told the New York Times, "They're going to get sued and they should get sued because I think a closer look at the record is likely to unearth knowing and willful misrepresentation."
In an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. Radio Network, Heins denied all speculation that the once successful RIM is now at the end of the row stating that RIM is merely "in the middle of a transition." Heins is adamant in iterating that "there is nothing wrong with the company as it exists right now... I am positive that when we launch BlackBerry 10, that there will be huge support from our carrier partners, our enterprise customers, and that we will re-emerge specifically in the U.S. and in Canada as a very strong player, not just in the smartphone market, but also emerging into the mobile computing market," he adds "This company is not ignoring the world out there, nor is it in a death spiral," as reported by Forbes.
Meanwhile, the rest of the smartphone world has been occupied in a humdrum of its own, with Samsung and Apple involved in a patent tussle, Amazon hinting to launch a smartphone of its own. And conclusive rumors that Apple is moving the release date of the iPhone 5 to August instead of November in light of the highly successful sales of Samsung's Galaxy.
