RIM Channels Apple In BlackBerry Comeback Bid: Corporate Canada

Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM)’s decline has -hard BlackBerry fans harking back 15 years to the days when another fruit-themed company losing market share, posting losses and spurring talk of imminent demise.

In 1997, Apple Computer Inc. (AAPL) lost than $1 billion, saw sales tumble 28 percent and was as little as 90 days from bankruptcy. Co-founder Steve Jobs returned Apple that year and did many of the things RIM is attempting now: He simplified the company, embraced a new operating and revamped the culture to focus products that were true breakthroughs.

RIM faces long odds trying to replicate Apple’s success story -- for , it lacks Steve Jobs. A RIM comeback also hinges challenging a hit product that Jobs himself introduced: the iPhone. Still, RIM has rabid fans and can rely Apple’s approach of controlling both hardware and , letting it make products that tightly integrate two pieces.

“Apple and RIM are both innovative companies very loyal customers,” said Ron Adner, an associate professor of strategy and entrepreneurship the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. “For RIM to follow that story , they need a lot of innovation in not a of time -- not impossible, but not likely.”

RIM Chief Executive Officer Thorsten Heins the helm in January and made some big changes, a plan to fire almost a third of the workforce and shut down manufacturing sites. The Waterloo, Ontario- company also hired JPMorgan Chase & Co. and RBC Capital Markets to study strategic options. Heins says selling the company isn’t the goal of the review. RIM would prefer find a partner or license its operating system.

‘Own Path’

With the changes way, Heins, 54, says his company will surprise critics its transformation.

“The trait that distinguishes innovative companies is the to keep conventional wisdom in perspective and focus on the unique value they provide customers,” he said an e-mail interview. “They follow their own path, is what RIM is doing -- and we know we must get it right.”

Even , Heins’s product changes haven’t been as big as those enacted by Jobs, died last year. Immediately after taking Apple in 1997 following a 12-year absence, Jobs cut about 70 percent of the company’s products -- printers and the Newton personal digital assistant. He trimmed research spending and eliminated the corporate-development department.


Adapted and abridged from: Bloomberg, July 26, 2012.