Investors had been clamoring for Research In Motion co-founders Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis to relinquish their co-CEO and co-chairman roles, and the company finally announced this past Sunday that Balsillie and Lazaridis were out, replaced by new chairperson of the board Barbara Stymiest and new chief executive officer Thorsten Heins. RIM’s stock plunged more than 13% when Heins introduced himself as the company’s new CEO, due in large part to a video interview during which he essentially told the same story RIM’s former chiefs have been telling for more than a year. The new CEO has since backed away from the company’s old it’s OK, we’re OK message while speaking to the press and analysts, however, and it is no coincidence that RIM’s stock has recovered a bit as Heins assures investors that change is brewing. Read on for more.

Moving away from what seemed to be a string of PR-approved messages, Heins admitted in a recent interview with CNBC that RIM fell behind its competition in the key U.S. market. ”It hurts. It hurts me to see us losing market share in the U.S.,” Heins confessed. “There was a paradigm shift, and we did not shift with it. I know we’ve made mistakes, and I know I’m in for a fight.” Apple and Google owned a combined 75.6% of the U.S. smartphone market in the three month through November 2011 while RIM’s market share slid to 16.6% according to comScore.

The fighting spirit is what investors are looking for, and a new wave of panic swept over the Street when that spirit seemed almost completely absent in Heins’s ill-received introductory video. The new chief is changing his tune, however. “We want to stop the bleeding,” Heins told CNBC.

In a separate interview with CrackBerry.com, Heins emphasized that change is coming but stated that RIM will continue to focus on its strengths. “There is a lot of change,” the executive said. “There is a lot of structure change, there has been already a lot of change in terms of our software, our software platform, bringing QNX in. There is no standstill at any moment here at RIM. What I wanted to make clear to the market is that we believe in our own strength. We are BlackBerry, we are an integrated solution, hardware, software, services and network.”

Heins also made sure to point out that RIM is well aware of the positions its competition has taken. He explained that RIM has a team dedicated to testing competitors’ devices and he himself tests iPhones, Android handsets and other phones. RIM’s historical lack of movement when it comes to features and elements of the user experience that have driven success on competing platforms has not gone unnoticed, so Heins’s comments are refreshing if nothing else.

Where device launches are concerned, RIM has a slow year ahead. BGR exclusively revealed the company’s 2012 roadmap early this week, which is highlighted by a new 7-inch PlayBook tablet — the sequel to a slate that cost RIM $485 million last quarter — and a single BlackBerry 10 smartphone that won’t launch until late in the third quarter or early in the fourth quarter. Its new chief executive has at least begun to publicly exhibit an understanding of the new smartphone landscape that has left the company trailing its competition, however, which is something RIM has never truly done in the past.

We still have eight months or even longer to wait before RIM releases its first BlackBerry 10 smartphone but in the meantime, RIM might do well to let its new CEO speak candidly more often.

Research In Motion is currently weighing every single option it can think of in an effort to reverse a negative trend that is approaching a boiling point for investors. Reports that RIM is currently in talks to license its software to other vendors are accurate according to our trusted sources, though we have been told that RIM is most likely leaning toward an outright sale of one or more divisions, or even the whole company. The front runner, we have been told by a trusted source with knowledge of the situation, is Samsung, which might be interested in RIM for a number of reasons.

One of the biggest assets RIM has is BlackBerry Messenger, and it would be a smart way for Samsung to differentiate itself inside the Android ecosystem. HTC has its Sense suite and it recently bought into Beats by Dr. Dre. Samsung could buy RIM, or a part of the company, and integrate not only BBM but also several other enterprise features into Android to make its devices an even bigger threat to competitors. This could also help Samsung better differentiate itself on the software and OS level, pulling more control into its hands and away from Google.

We have heard that Jim Balsillie is actively meeting with almost every company that might be interested in either a part or all of RIM, in addition to having talks about licensing. “Jim is going hard after Samsung,” said a source with knowledge of the negotiations. One of the reasons no deal has been struck, however, is that RIM’s co-CEOs are asking for way too much.

We have heard the company is looking for more than $10 billion for a full sale, likely somewhere in the $12 billion to $15 billion range, or between approximately $22.90 and $28.60 per share. RIM’s market capitalization currently sits at about $8.5 billion, though several analysts think that even $8.5 billion is more than an interested party would consider bidding at the moment.

Samsung declined to comment and a spokesperson for RIM did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It’s certainly an interesting time at Research In Motion, and we’ll have much more on RIM in the coming days.

UPDATE: In a statement provided to Reuters Wednesday evening, a Samsung spokesman said the company is not interested in an outright purchase of Research In Motion. The spokesman did not address reports that Samsung is considering licensing RIM’s software, however, or purchasing a portion of RIM’s assets.

RIM has responded to an exclusive BGR report published on Thursday in which our source claimed BlackBerry 10 was delayed not because the vendor was waiting for a new LTE chip, but because RIM’s developers have not yet been able to resolve many of the issues plaguing the new OS. “RIM made a strategic decision to launch BlackBerry 10 devices with a new, LTE-based dual core chip set architecture,” RIM told AllThingsD. “As explained on our earnings call, the broad engineering impact of this decision and certain other factors significantly influenced the anticipated timing for the BlackBerry 10 devices. The anonymous claim suggesting otherwise is inaccurate and uninformed. As RIM has previously explained, and as Mike Lazaridis reiterated on the earnings call, we will not launch BlackBerry 10 devices until we know they are ready and we believe this new chip set architecture is required to deliver the world class user experience that our customers will expect. Any suggestion to the contrary is simply false.” Contrary to RIM’s statement, our source indicated that the company has not yet been able to get core features like email and BlackBerry Messenger working as desired on BlackBerry 10 smartphones, and that it is “pushing this out as long as they can for one reason, they don’t have a working product yet.”

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Bad products, horrible software and no cohesive vision have seemingly turned Research In Motion into a company without motion at this point. Throw in a huge delay before BlackBerry 10 smartphones start shipping, and it’s clear why people are losing, or have lost, faith in a company that played a tremendous role in making the smartphone industry what it is today. Thanks to one of our most trusted sources, BGR now has new information on what’s going on inside Research In Motion, and the picture it paints isn’t a pretty one.

Our source has communicated to us in no uncertain terms that the PlayBook 2.0 OS developers have been testing is a crystal clear window into the current state of BlackBerry 10 on smartphones. No email, no BlackBerry Messenger — it’s almost identical. “Email and PIM [is better] on an 8700 than it is on BlackBerry 10,” our contact said while talking to us about RIM’s failure to make the company’s new OS work with the network infrastructure RIM is known for.

We also have some more background on why RIM’s BlackBerry 10 smartphones are delayed, and it has nothing to do with a new LTE chipset that RIM is waiting on. In what is something of a serious allegation, our source told us that Mike Lazaridis was lying when he said the company’s new lineup was delayed for that reason. ”RIM is simply pushing this out as long as they can for one reason, they don’t have a working product yet,” we were told.

At the end of our conversation, our source communicated something shocking for a high-level RIM employee to say. He told us that RIM is betting its business on a platform and ecosystem that isn’t even as good as iPhone OS 1.0 or Android 2.0. “There’s no room for a fourth ecosystem,” he stated, “and DingleBerry also works on BlackBerry 10.”

Research In Motion on Thursday announced a new promotion that will make its BlackBerry PlayBook tablet available to enterprise customers for free. Businesses that upgrade to RIM’s BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) v5.0 between now and December 31st will receive a free 16GB BlackBerry PlayBook tablet along with their purchase. Additional incentives provide up to $400 off installation services through participating partners. Earlier this week, RIM announced a sale that makes the PlayBook tablet available to consumers for $300 below standard retail pricing. Sales of RIM’s debut tablet have been lackluster at best, with shipments into retail channels totaling 500,000 units during the PlayBook’s first quarter of availability and just 200,000 units last quarter. As interest in RIM’s tablet tapers, sales of its latest smartphones stall and the company continues to burn through cash at an alarming rate, price drops and promotions appear to make up much of RIM’s strategy as it continues to tread water until the first round of BBX phones is ready to launch.

We’ve just heard from a trusted source that the dummy device The Verge posted an image of earlier today is indeed a real BlackBerry, and it should in fact launch as the company’s first BBX-based smartphone. Our source told us that the BlackBerry Colt, the first QNX-based handset RIM had been working on that looked just like a smaller PlayBook, was scrapped in favor of the BlackBerry London. In terms of release timing, it’s looking like the London is slated to launch some time in the third quarter next year, possibly late in the quarter. Remember, RIM still has not been able to get BES or BBM working on BBX devices — probably the only two features BlackBerry phones are still known for these days — so launch details are anything but firm right now.

Speaking with PCMag recently, RIM’s vice president of developer relations and ecosystem development Alec Saunders said that the company’s early BBX-powered smartphones will not resemble the popular BlackBerry Bold form factor. The first BBX devices will instead look like smaller versions of the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet and will come equipped with screens sporting a 16:9 aspect ratio and a 1024 x 600-pixel resolution. Saunders also said the first BBX phones will support BlackBerry Enterprise Server. BGR’s exclusively reported in August that the Waterloo, Canada-based company was building a special version of BES for its new BBX devices. According to rumors, RIM is rushing to get the BlackBerry Colt out of the door in light of BlackBerry 7 device sales that have reportedly underwhelmed, and it is expected to make its debut during the first quarter of next year.

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RIM acknowledged that many its users have reported delayed message deliveries on Wednesday, although it remains unclear what the culprit might be. “We’re getting reports that some users are experiencing delays,” RIM said on its official Twitter account. “We’re investigating and will update you ASAP.” A BlackBerry outage affected millions worldwide for several days during October. The downtime resulted in a class-action lawsuit and could cost RIM an estimated $100 million. 

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Research In Motion co-CEO Mike Lazaridis confirmed on a conference call Thursday morning that all BlackBerry services have been restored globally. The co-chief had issued a video apology to customers earlier on Thursday, offering reassurances that the company was doing everything in its power to resolve service interruptions that had extended into their fourth day. A switch failure followed by a large backlog of emails is being blamed for the service outage, which affected millions of BlackBerry users across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, India, North America and South America. RIM said it is putting fixes in place to prevent a recurrence of this issue in the future, and it is currently considering how it might reimburse carriers and BlackBerry users for the disruption caused by this week’s outages.

After having initially said the issues were resolved following one day of service interruptions, millions of BlackBerry users across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and even some areas in South America still find themselves without access to the Wen or messaging services for the third consecutive day. Research In Motion confirmed earlier that a bug on a Blackberry server was responsible for knocking millions offline on Monday, and the Waterloo, Ontario-based smartphone maker elaborated on Tuesday that the continued interruption was caused by a core switch failure. RIM now says the outage has caused a large backlog of data that must be cleared before service can return to normal. No firm timeline has been issued.

UPDATE: Our inbox is starting to get hit with reports of service interruptions in the U.S. and Canada as well. Is your BlackBerry not working this morning? Leave us a comment below and let us know.

BlackBerry users across Europe, the Middle East and Africa again find themselves without service on Tuesday as a bug that knocked millions of users offline on Monday has seemingly resurfaced. Research In Motion announced early Tuesday morning that BlackBerry service across the EMEA region had been restored, but the Associated Press later reported that Internet and messaging services for users across the region are again offline. The report was later confirmed by several carriers including T-Mobile UK, Vodafone UK and Etisalat in the United Arab Emirates. The cause of the outage is unclear, however a report on Monday attributed the massive service interruption to a bug on a RIM server in England.

UPDATE: RIM has stated that Tuesday’s outage was due to a core switch failure.

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BlackBerry users in Africa, the Middle East and Europe have been without service since 11:00 a.m. Monday, The Telegraph reports. A bug on Research In Motion’s server in Slough, England is to blame and it appears to have impaired all users, independent of carrier or device. RIM has not issued a statement on the matter. “There is an issue with BlackBerry services at present,” a T-Mobile UK representative said on Twitter. “RIM [is] investigating this at present.” Additionally, Batelco, a wireless carrier in Bahrain, issued a statement that confirmed the service was out in the entire country and explained the issue is being “dealt with by BlackBerry providers in Canada.”

Thanks Adam!

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India’s government is currently in the process of testing a solution that will allow it to spy on BlackBerry users sending and receiving data over India’s cellular airwaves. The country’s Telecom Secretary has confirmed that India’s Department of Telecommunications is testing the solution, which will allow government officials to monitor several services tied to Research In Motion’s BlackBerry smartphones. The new solution being tested is part of India’s demands to gain access to messages sent by its citizens, and the government has threatened to ban BlackBerry devices if it is not granted access to users’ data. RIM has cooperated with some of India’s demands in the past, having provided it with the means to see messages sent via BlackBerry Messenger and to monitor web browsing, but the Waterloo, Ontario-based vendor has insisted on multiple occasions that it does not possess the capability to monitor encrypted emails sent and received via its corporate BES service. India’s Telecom Secretary would not specify which BlackBerry services this new monitoring solution addresses.

Research In Motion vice president of BlackBerry Enterprise Server John Vandermay has left the company to assume a new position with Gemcom Software International, the Financial Post reported on Wednesday. Gemcom Software International is a software mining company based in Vancouver. While at RIM, Vandermay led a team of more than 400 software developers and testers working on RIM’s BES, among other projects. Vandermay is not the first executive to leave the Waterloo, Canada-based company in recent history. RIM’s chief marketing officer Keith Pardy left the firm in March. In addition, RIM’s former vice president of digital marketing and media Brian Wallace jumped ship to Samsung in June, shortly before Samsung poached RIM’s former BlackBerry PlayBook senior manager Ryan Biden. In August, RIM’s senior director of global developer relations Mike Kirkup announced that he was leaving the company after a 10-year stint.

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Purported images from version 2.0 of RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook OS have been published by a Chinese website. If authentic, they reaffirm several details about the upcoming OS — most notably, perhaps, is the platform’s lack of support for current versions of RIM’s BES enterprise email solution. BGR exclusively reported in early August that RIM has to rewrite its BES code in order to support the PlayBook’s QNX-based OS. As can be seen in the screenshot above, that rewrite is ongoing and as such, it looks like the next major tablet OS build will not support BES email despite finally adding native support for Exchange, IMAP and POP. Beyond that, another screenshot clearly shows an Android icon in the app menu, no doubt the Android Player RIM tablet fans have been clamoring for. Additional screenshots, including the one that shows RIM’s Android app player icon, follow below.

[Via Engadget]

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