10 Things to Know About RIM’s New CEO, Thorsten Heins

RIM's New President and CEO Thorsten Heins

PCWorld - BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion (RIM) yesterday appointed a brand new chief executive officer and president, Thorsten Heins. The move follows months of pressure from RIM shareholders and others to oust former RIM co-CEOs, Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie. (In fact, I wrote a piece earlier this month explaining why a major leadership change was in order at RIM.)

Check out the following list for 10 interesting tidbits on Mr. Heins, his past and his plans for RIM and BlackBerry in the coming months and years.

1) Thorsten Heins is of German origin, and his middle name is Gerhard.

“I’m German, and I’m a big fan of the term ‘process discipline’,” he said with laugh in a conference call this morning.

In addition to his role at RIM, Heins is also a Board Member of the German Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Toronto, according to BusinessWeek.com.

2) Heins has been with RIM since December 2007, serving as a SVP of the company’s handheld business unit and then as one of RIMs two chief operating officers. He played key roles in the creation of RIMs product portfolio. Before working for RIM, Heins was employed by Siemens, starting in 1984 just after his graduation from the University of Hannover in Germany, where he earned a master’s degree in science and physics.

3) Heins says he is open to licensing the BlackBerry OS, but it’s not his main concern at this point.

“I will entertain those discussions; I will assess the business opportunity for RIM,” Heins said. “And I will make the decision together with the board. It’s not my focus. ”



However, he does believe that the upcoming BlackBerry 10 handheld OS, which is expected to be released along with at least one new device in late 2012, will become an attractive option for hardware makers looking to license software.

“I’m absolutely confident that BlackBerry 10 will prove itself,” Heins said                       More

Um, RIM? Hi, you need better freebies

commentary Research in Motion, is that really all you’ve got?

After a critical outage that left some BlackBerry users without e-mail for as many as three days, RIM is offering customers $100 worth of premium apps for free. Enterprise customers also get a month’s worth of technical support.

The problem is, the BlackBerry faithful stick with you for primarily one reason: your excellent e-mail service. If they wanted games, media apps and other whiz-bang features, they would have fled to an iPhone or Android smartphone already. You lose your e-mail, even for one day, and you lose your best reason for keeping a BlackBerry.

“(RIM) has to do something really substantial, something that makes people go wow,” said Lance Strate, a professor of communications and media studies for Fordham University.

So here’s a modest proposal: work with your retail and carrier partners to get your customers early upgrades to new BlackBerrys. For some of your best customers, hand them out for free.

Already own a new BlackBerry? Throw in a Bluetooth handset or other accessory.

Sure, giving away phones sounds like sacrilege at a company that generates the bulk of its revenue from hardware, but bear with me. Such a program would buy a massive amount of goodwill from peeved customers. You could even snatch away the spotlight from Apple’s latest iPhone launch.

RIM’s BlackBerry DevCon conference starts tomorrow. Just think how different the atmosphere would be if attendees were buzzing about the new BlackBerry program instead of grousing about the outage.

There are longer-term advantages, too. You can lock in customers that may have been tempted by the new iPhone or the latest wave of Android smartphone. You’re so proud of the latest BlackBerry operating system? Here’s a great way to get more users to try it out.                  More

RIM Posts Dismal Quarterly Results, Stock Dives

Research in Motion’s (RIMM: 29.54, -0.18, -0.61%) top and bottom line sagged in the second quarter — coming in far short of analysts expectation — as the BlackBerry maker struggled to find its way.

The Canada-based technology company saw its per-share earnings plunge to 63 cents, from $1.46 in the same period last year.  Excluding costs, the company’s profits came in at 80 cents a share, far below the consensus estimate of 88 cents.

Shares tumbled more than 10% in after-hours trading on the news and are down 49.2% so far for the year.

RIM shipped 200,000 PlayBooks during the quarter the ended in August, a far cry from the 600,000 analysts anticipated.  The tablet computer was seen by many analysts as a product designed to reinvigorate the ailing company, and tap into the quickly-growing marketplace that is presently dominated by Apple’s (AAPL: 392.96, +3.66, +0.94%) iPad.             More

The 5 Most Evil Things Tech Companies Helped Happen

If oppressive regimes want to stay oppressive, they need to fear—and wield—technology like a sword covered in napalm. And in most cases, they can’t do that without using outside help. Here are the five worst corporate collaborators in technology.

IBM & The Holocaust

 

You really cannot get much worse than helping the Nazis perpetrate the Holocaust. You just can’t. And yet, the company that used to make our laptops and now entertains us on Jeopardy helped create the most rationalized, methodically-perfected means of genocide in human history. As author Edwin Black explains in his exhaustive “IBM and the Holocaust,” the computer firm’s services were perfectly suited for the machinations of the Third Reich. The Nazis wanted to perfect human murdering. To turn it into a science. Genocide was to be flawless, smooth, and predictable. Sort of like a computer:

“The only way to eliminate any mistakes,” [Nazi scientist Dr. Karl] Keller insisted, “is the registration of the entire population. How is this to be done?” Keller demanded “the establishment of mandatory personal genetic-biographical forms…Nothing would hinder us,” he assured, “from using these forms to enter any important information which can be used by race scientists.”

For this, Germany needed computers. IBM made great computers—and they were sold to Hitler, straight from the New York office. IBM’s custom made punchcard computers were specially designed for the Third Reich, and Nazi computer scientists were personally trained by IBM engineers. The statistical might of these machines were able to facilitate the chilling ease with which the Holocaust was executed.

Nokia Siemens & Torture in Bahrain

 

Authoritarian regimes don’t usually need much evidence before torturing citizens within an inch of their lives. But in Bahrain, government torture squads use intercepted phone, text, and internet transcripts as sufficient reason to devilishly torment its people into submission (or worse). And how do they do it? With equipment sold to them by Nokia Siemens. As in, the same companies that sell phones and electrical equipment. The systems provided by Nokia Siemens are hardwired into Bahrain’s communications infrastructure—inescapable eyes and ears. This listening and whispering menace is also the reason Bahrain hasn’t joined in with other Middle Eastern nations in overthrowing—or at least rallying against—their harsh governments. It’s hard to organize change when you’ve got an omniscient torture goon standing over your shoulder.              More

RIM debuts new BlackBerry Curve

The BlackBerry Curve 9350/9360/9370 will 
be available in Canada later this month 
and is expected to ship worldwide in September. 
(Credit: RIM)

CNET - The BlackBerry Bold, Torch, and Storm all got a makeover, and now it’s the Curve’s turn.

Today, RIM introduced the latest version of its entry-level Curve series. Available in Canada later this month and shipping to other carriers worldwide starting in September, the new BlackBerry Curve will come in three models: the CDMA-only BlackBerry Curve 9350, the GSM/UMTS BlackBerry Curve 9360, and the dual-mode GSM/CDMA BlackBerry Curve 9370.

Designed for those looking for a more affordable smartphone option or for people making the jump from a feature phone, the Curve offers a more entry-level set of features than its bigger brother, the Bold. This includes a 2.44-inch, 480×360 display, an 800MHz processor, a 5-megapixel camera, and NFC support. Both the Curve 9350 and 960 have 512MB internal storage, while the Curve 9370 has 1GB of internal storage.               More

The Week in Tweets: After London Riots, Is Social Media at Risk?

 

PCMag.Com - The London riots dominated the headlines this week, particularly as it related to mobile technology and social media. Things kicked off with discussions about mobs using RIM’s BlackBerry Messenger to organize attacks and escalated to Prime Minister David Cameron calling for rioters and looters to be banned from social media.


The BlackBerry is particularly popular among U.K. teens, according to a recent study, mainly because of BBM, which essentially allows users to send free text messages to other BlackBerry owners. Those messages, however, are rather difficult to trace, reportedly making them an easy way for rioters to organize their efforts. RIM has said it will cooperate with U.K. police as it relates to lawful requests for data, an announcement that prompted hackers to deface the official BlackBerry blog.

Prime Minister David Cameron later proposed a social media ban for those found guilty of rioting or looting. “We are working with the Police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality,” Cameron said in a speech before the House of Commons.

“Free flow of information can be used for good. But it can also be used for ill,” Cameron continued. “And when people are using social media for violence we need to stop them.”

He did not go into detail about how that might work or how potential offenders would be identified, but Facebook, Twitter, and RIM are reportedly meeting with the U.K.’s home secretary next week to discuss that and other issues.

Speaking of Twitter, the micro-blogging site exploded this week. One in every 170 U.K. Internet visits on Monday was to Twitter, with the Twitter homepage receiving 3.4 million visits in the U.K. alone, according to data from Experian Hitwise.

Hit the slideshow to see what people were saying.

Click here to see “The Week in Tweets: After London Riots, Is Social Media at Risk?” slideshow >

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