BlackBerry-maker is in turmoil as top duo quit

Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, who built the latter's 1984 start-up into a technology giant which brought in sales worth $20 billion (£13 billion) last year, will be replaced by little-known German Thorsten Heins.

He has been RIM's chief operating officer for the past four years, after spending 20 years at Siemens.

RIM said Balsillie and Lazaridis will remain on its board, with the latter becoming vice-chairman to new chairman Barbara Stymiest, already
a director.

The corporate double-act still each own a 5% stake in RIM, but their departure comes after a rapid decline at the company named by Fortune magazine in 1999 as "the fastest-growing company on earth".

When RIM launched its BlackBerry in 1999, the handset's inclusion of "push email", which arrived automatically, seconds after it was sent, helped create the smartphones market.

Popularity soared, first among corporate customers, then domestic phone-users. But both groups have spent the past few years defecting to Apple's iPhone and HTC and Samsung phones running Google's Android system.

RIM's share of the global market dropped to 11% in the third quarter of 2011 from 15% a year earlier, and in September, it posted its first quarterly fall in revenues in nine years.

RIM's Playbook tablet failed to reignite interest: the firm sliced the price by more than half a few weeks ago thanks to meagre sales and investors including Jaguar Financial have called for RIM to be sold, merged or broken up.

The Canadian firm's shares have fallen 88% since RIM's peak in 2008 when the firm had a market value of $80 billion. Microsoft, Nokia and Amazon have all been reported to be considering a takeover.

Last night Lazaridis, who with Balsillie is lauded as a Canadian hero, featuring in the country's citizenship guide for new immigrants, said: "This marks the beginning of a new era for RIM. It was a bit of bumpy ride. We've done it as best we could [but] Thorsten is the ideal choice. He has the right skills at the right time."

In some ways, RIM's story echoes that of Kodak Eastman, which invented the digital camera, but was then left behind as rivals perfected them. It filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last week.