BlackBerry Leaves the Boardroom
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The Pearl targets a wider consumer market with a host of fun features. In Gear Factor.
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(InfoWorld) - Research in MotionÂ (RIM) will search for a new chairman of its board after CEO Jim Balsillie stepped down from the job Monday, taking blame for his role in a stock-option scam that will cost the company $250 million in restated earnings. RIM, which makes the BlackBerry smartphone, will restate its annual earnings statements for fiscal years 2004, 2005, and 2006, and its statement for the first quarter of 2007. The changes could also affect its second and third quarter statements for 2007, which areÂ not yet filed, since RIM's internal audit is not complete. Balsillie will keep his other titles as co-CEO and a member of the board, but he and other top managers will be forced to pay back the profits they made by hand picking the most profitable dates for buying their stock options instead of receiving them the same date they were awarded, the company said. Employees can inflate their profits by claiming they received stock options on a day when the market was low, then selling them when the market rises again. Many technology companies have restated earnings caused by that practice in recent months, includingÂ Apple,Â Broadcom,Â McAfee, andÂ Monster Worldwide, as well asÂ Pixar, the computer animation film studio. Hoping to avoid lawsuits and regulatory censure, RIM began an internal investigation of stock option granting and accounting in August 2006, and predicted one month later that the damage would be between $25 million and $45 million. The company now says the true amount will be nearly 10 times that estimate. RIM also says it is cooperating with accounting investigations by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Ontario Securities Commission and a shareholder lawsuit filed in Canada's Ontario Superior Court of Justice. RIM's investigation covered more than 3,200 grant packages made between December 1996 and August 2006. So far, the review committee has found incorrect accounting for all options granted before Feb. 27, 2002, and in 63 percent of the grants made since then. The recent batch includes 321 grants for a total of 4.6 million shares. Balsillie resigned as chairman because the review showed that he had personally made or approved all grants made since RIM went public in 1997, except for those to himself and co-CEO Mike Lazaridis. RIM Chief Financial Officer Dennis Kavelman also helped to administer the awards. Balsillie told an internal review committee that he used the grants to attract skilled employees to the company in a competitive industry, and he made them so informally because of the RIM's rapid growth at that time, according to a company statement released Monday about the review. Balsillie and Kavelman also told the committee "they had a general understanding" that options could be granted at any chosen date within the fiscal reporting period. "Their understanding was incorrect," the committee said in its report. "The Special Committee determined that the company failed to maintain adequate internal and accounting controls with respect to the issuance of options in compliance with the company's stock option plan ... the grant process was characterized by informality and a lack of definitive documentation, and lacked safeguards to ensure compliance with applicable accounting, regulatory and disclosure rules." In other fallout from the investigation, Kavelman will step down as CFO, taking a new job as chief operating officer for administration and operations. Balsillie and Lazaridis will pay the company $5 million each to defray the cost of the investigation, and RIM accepted the resignations of Kendall Cork and Doug Wright, two members of the board's compensation committee. Finally, RIM promised to establish an oversight committee, charged with examining executive compensation, insider trading and hiring practices. Â
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I'm no inside-the-Beltway powerbroker or captain of industry. For these reasons, I have little need to flash a Blackberry around at lunch meetings or return messages before I can get to a full-size screen and keyboard.
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The Blackberry wireless device maker is straining to exceed expectations.
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Chairman of the board retires and cashes out.
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The Microsoft executive who had led the effort to close the gap on Google is leaving the company.
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International wireless solutions manufacturer Research in Motion (RIM) believes the days of disconnected PDAs are gone. The BlackBerry-maker said that users&#39; information is changing too rapidly for disconnected
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An outage has disconnected BlackBerry smart phones across North America.
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Sky Dayton is giving up his role in the day-to-day operations of the hip cell phone company he started, but will remain active with the company as chairman of the board.
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NEW YORK/LONDON  - Research In Motion Ltd   RIM.TO, the maker of Blackberry e-mail devices popular among   executives, said on Thursday it is pushing into a wider   consumer market with the Pearl, its first phone with a camera   and music player.
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Michel Mayer is leaving his dual role as chairman and CEO for the semiconductor company.
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I take it all back Confessions of an analyst A couple of months, I committed the cardinal sin of criticising a mobile device without actually having used one. When I posted my initial reaction to the BlackBerry 8100 âPearlâ here, I was bothered by the thought that RIM had sold out its loyal business users by bowing to the pressure of the consumer market and cluttering the most effective mobile email product line available today with a gimmicky track-ball and trivialities such as a camera and media player.â¦
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BlackBerry manufacturer Research in Motion said it has settled its lawsuit with Samsung over its use of the "BlackJack" trademark for handsets sold in the US by Cingular Wireless (now AT&T).  But the terms of that settlement are unclear, and AT&T may still have to make changes.
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The world's top chip maker reorganized its corporate  structure, introducing new businesses focused on mobile  electronics, corporations and homes and eliminating a  money-losing group centered on communications.
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First it was the CEO, and now the CFO has left, too. What should shareholders be thinking?
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Research In Motion Ltd.  RIM.TO shares fell 4 percent on Wednesday after the  BlackBerry wireless e-mail device maker reported strong  third-quarter results but issued forecasts that disappointed  some investors.
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Vodafone have today announced a new form of BlackBerry, the 7100v. It has been designed with the BlackBerries creator, RIM (Research In Motion) and will be the first release of a new form factor.