Kicking off day two of BlackBerry World, CEO Thorsten Heins had a 'meet the press' season.
Focusing on this first three months in the job, Heins opened by saying part of the change he was driving at RIM was to start communicating more with the press and analysts.
"I spoke to a lot of people. I've had a lot of different input, before I decided where I wanted to take RIM," he said of his early experiences as CEO.
New horizons
Not wanting to criticise the previous management, nevertheless, he said, "We have a little fat on the hips. We need to become a lean, mean, hunting machine."
Part of this has seen Heins restructure the upper management team, with co-founders and ex-co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie sidelined.
"I have established a management team I have full belief in," Heins explained, saying that previously there wasn't always one individual who was accountable for specific operations.
This shift has also seen the company building out more local product teams, which will provide flexibility, while reporting into a strong management structure.
"BlackBerry 7's launch wasn't coherent," Heins stated, saying that the company would soon be hiring a CMO to manage its marketing message.
Growing pains
Heins said that part of RIM's problem was it grew too fast.
"When a company is growing fast, you lose line of sight of what everyone is doing," he explained.
"Everything becomes an opportunity, but it becomes there are parts of the business that are exciting but aren't core."
The point now is that RIM needs focus.
"I'm a [originally] physicist so I like lasers," he said. "It's high energy focused on a very small point."
This is my crowd
Of course, that focus - at present - is on BlackBerry 10 - a platform that involves hardware, software and cloud-based services.
Heins said that when RIM looked at other OS solutions - such as Android or Window Phone - he wasn't confident that they give it the ability to differentiate. That was why RIM took the hard decision to do its own new, ground-up OS.
More conceptually, though, Heins says that RIM's overall focus on what he labels 'BlackBerry People'.
"Who is our target customer? They are people who want to succeed, but not necessity in terms of business," Heins said, pointing out it could be in terms of sports, family or other life goals.
And when it came to questions, Heins was combative and confident.
"We know we're in a big fight at the moment, but I'm not here to be in the game. I'm here to win."
News
Contributing Editor
A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.
Related Articles
News
May 2nd, 2012
BlackBerry World 2012: We've already got games running on Blackberry 10 say Fishlabs and Paw Print
News
May 2nd, 2012
BlackBerry World 2012: Thorsten Heins signals a shift in RIM's tablet strategy. More enterprise tool than consumer hardware
Top Stories
Feature
8 hours, 7 minutes ago
Speaker Spotlight: Dubai NEXT's Aisha Alazab on transforming ideas into successful campaigns and funding
Feature
Apr 25th, 2024
Speaker Spotlight: Applovin's Pankaj Choudhary talks 360 strategies for successful app marketing
Events
Esports Future Summit | Middle East | Apr 27th |
Dubai GameExpo Summit 2024 | Middle East | May 1st |
The MENA Games Industry Awards 2024 | Middle East | May 2nd |
GameDev Atlantic 2024 | May 4th | |
Mobidictum Meetup Berlin May 2024 | Europe | May 7th |
Mobidictum Meetup Tallinn May 2024 | Europe | May 21st |
Israel Mobile Summit 2024 | Middle East | Jun 6th |
DevGAMM Vilnius 2024 | Europe | Jun 14th |
Popular Stories
News
Apr 23rd, 2024
Supercell’s Squad Busters soft launches today with over 100,000 Google Play downloads
Feature
Apr 24th, 2024