Heins, who also joins the company's board, is already listed as President and CEO on RIM's executive bios page. The change in leadership may have come at the behest of Lazaridis who explained in a statement, “There comes a time in the growth of every successful company when the founders recognize the need to pass the baton to new leadership. Jim [Balsillie] and I went to the Board and told them that we thought that time was now."
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The move comes after a solid year of miscues and blunders by Balsillie and Lazaridis. 2011 got off to a promising start with the introduction of the Playbook tablets, but RIM bungled the launch, leaving out key features like a native e-mail client. Later in the year the company announced the name for a new combined OS only to learn they didn't have rights to the name. The company also suffered through an extended service outage and took what some believe was too long to respond directly to customers about the situation.
The company has also steadily slipped down the ladder in smartphone market share as Android competitors and Apple released more and more innovative and well-received handsets. The calls for RIM to replace its co-CEOs have been growing steadily, even as RIM gets its house in order. Just this month, the company finally unveiled Playbook OS 2.0 which does feature its own email client. Now the question is what Heins can do to return the Canadian technology company to the front of the mobile technology pack.