Poll: How long will it take RIM to turnaround?

Today was day one for Thorsten Heins as RIM’s new President and CEO. We’re gunning for the Canadian company and congratulate Heins on his new role – not the easiest job to take on and surely he has a tremendous amount of brand building to do. Heins started off the morning by outlining his strategy for the company – feels like there will be a great deal of “process discipline” over the next few months. Vague, yes. However, there are a few certainties: Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie are out of the day-to-day operations, but not removed; BlackBerry PlayBook is now “a new mobile computing platform” and OS 2.0 will be available in February; BlackBerry 10 devices will be launched later this year and will also be able to run Android apps; No plans to sell the company, but could be interested in licensing BB10. Finally, RIM has plans to hire a new CMO and increase their North American market share. With all this said the stock market reacted by a drop of 8.47% to hit $15.56. This was probably not the news the RIM execs and the board was hoping for.

Heins also said that “If we continue doing what we are doing, I see no problems of us being in the top 3 players worldwide in the next years in wireless”. RIM currently has 75 million subscribers, over 50 million BBM subscribers and $1.5 billion in cash… but much change is needed. Fresh new devices – smartphones and tablets – with a fresh plan of attack to acquire a massive amount of customers (consumer and business). We’ve put a quick poll together: How long will it take RIM to turnaround?

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