Another tidbit to come out of this morning's conference call was the position of newly-appointed CEO Thorsten Heins on splitting up the company. Some investors were suggesting RIM break up into separate handset and services entities, not unlike the Motorola breakup a few years ago.
"My view on RIM is a very, very clear view. Guys, I've been in device-only businesses before, and I know what it means to be in that segment. Frankly, if your value proposition is a device alone, it is a cutthroat price and cost business. My view on RIM is very, very clear. We are strong because we have an integrated solution, we are vertical, we have our network, we have our services, we have our enterprise servers out there with more 250,000 enterprises connected to it, and we have fantastic devices and a fantastic ecosystem that we're building. I want to build on that. I will not in any way split this up or separate this into different businesses."
You might recall that in addition to ousting Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, splitting up RIM was one of the calls-to-action made by some shareholders. When put in this light by Thorsten, it's easy to see why RIM isn't interested in destroying one of their major competitive advantages. Chris has already gone on at length about how the switch to ActiveSync in BB10 is a necessary move, but they won't be axing the existing NOC altogether. Apparently the margins on this kind of service are huge, and RIM would be missing out on significant profits if they were to give it up and instead focus exclusively the high-stakes hardware game.
Personally, I agree that RIM should keep their end-to-end strategy, but what do you guys think? Would a separate entity be able to operate more efficiently?
