Natalie Thomas: It’s all gone sour for ‘outdated’ BlackBerry

OH HOW the mighty have fallen. It was only a week ago that technology analysts were shaking their heads in disbelief as Kodak, the iconic brand that brought the world the first digital camera, was consigned to the history books as it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Now we appear to be witnessing another meteoric demise from Research in Motion (RIM), the Canadian firm behind the BlackBerry, which is on a similar path from market leader to laggard.

Ten years ago, every high-flying executive from London to New York had a BlackBerry in their suit pocket after RIM’s co-founders, Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, came up with the first viable technology that allowed business people to check e-mails while out of the office.

Today, the same men that pioneered the smartphone are putting the fate of their company into the hands of a little known former Siemens director after what can only be described as an annus horribilis.

Over the past 12 months, RIM has seen the smartphone market slip further from its grasp as competitors such as Apple, Google and Samsung have continued to beat it at its own game.

The talk for months has been over whether Lazaridis and Balsillie had lost their grip and RIM shares last year lost 75 per cent of their value as investors began to question whether it would soon go the way of Kodak and Finnish giant Nokia, which is facing a similar fight for survival. Rumours also swelled over a possible sale of the firm.

Yesterday Lazaridis and Balsillie ended months of speculation, announcing they planned to take a back seat, leaving Thorsten Heins, who joined RIM in 2007, to lead the fight-back.

The duo talked a good game about how “there comes a time in the growth of every successful company when the founders recognise the need to pass the baton to new leadership”. But the positive spin was convincing no-one as analysts said Heins had been handed the equivalent of cavalry while the competition had already developed drones. The shares ended 8.5 per cent lower at $15.56, for a market capitalization of little more than $8 billion.

The BlackBerry’s demise has been put down to RIM’s failure to keep up with software development.

It appeared to be taken by surprise by the launch of the iPhone in 2007. And while Apple and Google have poured billions into developing smart operating systems that support all manner of apps, and even allow mobile phone users to dictate instructions to their handsets, RIM got left behind in the dark ages as it concentrated too much on the hardware and the handsets themselves.

Lazaridis and Balsillie, still major shareholders in RIM, are staying on the firm’s board to support Heins, who has been described as an “unknown quantity” by technology wizards.

However, the new boy did little to impress yesterday when he insisted that the leadership change was not a “seismic” event and he didn’t think significant changes were needed. In this light, it’s difficult to see RIM ever winning back its market leader crown.

Fat cats will still be able to enjoy the cream

IT’S a fairly safe bet that the City’s “fat cats” were still sipping their Cristal Champagne last night after Business Secretary Vince Cable set out his proposals to curb executive pay.

The most striking measure will see shareholders handed a binding vote on remuneration packages – a proposal originally put forward by fund manager Fidelity last week.

But the government refused to bow to pressure for executive pay caps and to give employee representatives a role in deciding boardroom remuneration.

This raised the inevitable hackles among Labour and the unions who claimed that the proposals were “half-baked”. Just as inevitably, those on the right branded Cable’s initiatives “liberal clap-trap” and “drivel”.

While there is a lot of sense in giving shareholders a binding vote – at the moment their say is only advisory – Cable’s unconvincing delivery to the Commons yesterday only served to highlight the impotence of the government to shackle the Square Mile.

The public, unions and politicians can scream and shout as much as they like about overpaid fat cats but there’s only so much the government can do.

When bonus time comes around again in 2013, we’re likely to see exactly the same backlash against City pay as we do every year.