After enduring a few years of shrinking relevance in the smartphone market, RIM punctuated its decline with the simultaneous departure of its conjoined CEOs, Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie. And while this may signal a new direction for the company, it also likely means the stream of moronic soundbytes we’ve grown accustomed to will cease to exist as well.
RIM’s Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis is on a roll with expressing his feelings of anger/hurt/outrage, as shown in a NYT interview yesterday and now a cut-short video with the BBC, which dared to ask about the “security problem” of the last year which saw BlackBerry services temporarily terminated in the Middle East and India.
RIM Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis moaned to the NYT: “Why is it that people don’t appreciate our profits? Why is it that people don’t appreciate our growth? Why is it that people don’t appreciate the fact that we spent the last four years going global? Why is it that people don’t appreciate that we have 500 carriers in 170 countries with products in almost 30 languages?”
RIM’s CEO Mike Lazaridis spoke out ahead of tomorrow’s banning of BlackBerry services in Saudi Arabia, coolly pointing out that “everything on the internet is encrypted. This is not a BlackBerry-only issue.” [WSJ]
