Thorsten Heins: 'There is No Reason to Sell RIM'

In Thorsten Heins' first address to staff since taking the reins from Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, the new CEO covered a wide range of topics, mostly in response to emails from concerned employees. The Globe and Mail obtained a copy of Thorsten's discussion and leaked some interesting tidbits.

In his address, Thorsten essentially admits that Research In Motion neglected the U.S. market in favour of international expansion: "When we started this strategy of going global, we knew we had to throw basically most of our resources into the global play, which we did," he said. "But we had to do this a little bit at the expense of being very, very strong in the No. 1 competitive market of the world, which is the U.S. market."

Thorsten also insisted that RIM—a "fantastic growth and profit story … with a fantastic brain base"—is "simply" not for sale. “Don’t believe everything you read,” he declared. "Why should we [sell]? … There's no reason to."

The Munich-born executive says that he will focus on marketing RIM's existing portfolio of BlackBerry 7 devices and try his hardest to get the PlayBook 2.0 update out in February. Following that, his priority will be launching BlackBerry 10 smartphones before the end of the year.

Photo: CBC