So where's RIM heading now?

RIM's latest quarter came out and the numbers were not good.

The Waterloo, Ontario-based company shipped 11.1 million BlackBerry smartphones in the fourth quarter ended March 3, down 21 percent from the third quarter, but slightly ahead of analysts' expectations.

Even so it was the first quarterly decline in the period covering Christmas since 2006 and only the second time RIM has reported the metric dropping for that crucial period.

RIM sold more than 500,000 PlayBooks in the fourth quarter, a number inflated by deep discounts offered to boost sales of the product.

It was also announced that Jim Basillie, former co-CEO, has stepped down as director.

David Yach, a chief technology officer, and Jim Rowan, a chief operating officer, also stepped down.

Mike Lazaridis, former co-CEO, remains. 

Mike Lazaridis, former CEO of RIM

What does this mean to RIM?

Personally I think it means they are looking to be bought out. 

Keeping Lazaridis around (or him choosing to stay around) is most likely more about having the brains behind RIM's technology there to interact with potential suitors. 

Any acquisition will hinge on being able to formulate a clear strategy vision behind the integration of RIM's technology with the acquiring company. Only Lazaridis is equipped to sit at those meetings and help figure that vision out such that someone feels comfortable making an acquisition bid. 

Sure, they could probably interact with other senior executives, but Lazaridis has the relationships and industry respect to actually generate interest by potential suitors. 

That's just my hypothesis anyway. 

The sun is definitely setting on RIM and the only question now is whether this gets wrapped up quickly or whether it takes a while. I'm 99.99 per cent sure there will be no organic turn-around here. 

The damage they've suffered has simply been too great on all fronts - from a stock price down 80 per cent or more from its peak, to losing the founders, to technology products that aren't the first pick of consumers and which are slowly being dropped by the corporate world... it's simply too big a mess to fix while their competitors are busy firing on all cylinders.

From a PR perspective, I expect to hear very little out of RIM. The PR staff are most likely on auto-pilot, tossing out non-eventful releases simply to keep a news release cycle going out of habit. There might be some activity around the release of BB10, but once again, I suspect said marketing efforts will take place on auto pilot. 

This isn't the nicest thing to say in these situations, but it's the truth, most of RIM's employees (including the PR team) are probably polishing up their resumes and thinking about what they are going to do after their time with RIM comes to an end. 

The biggest hurdle ahead for RIM's PR team will have to be endless rumors in the markets over the next year regarding acquisition. 

In addition they should be planning for managing potential leaks that will come out of RIM. I wouldn't be surprised to see bitter employees contact the media in an effort to vent their frustrations anonymously. 

This is where as a PR person you want to have close relations with the HR department, because one of your biggest concerns on the PR front are your own employees. Together with HR you can devise strategies to stay abreast of how employees are reacting to things and implement avenues for them to vent their frustrations internally so that they don't go externally to vent those frustrations. 

Anyway, I hope I'm wrong about all this and RIM has some master plan up its sleeve and turns everything around. But when you see one of the founders leave as a result of failure, generally speaking that reflects that behind closed doors everyone has accepted that there is no turn-around in the making. 

BGR perhaps sums it up the best in their recent article:

Research in Motion is dead