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Maker Of Taxi-Ordering App myTaxi Raises €10 Million From Daimler, Lars Hinrichs

Posted: 23 Jan 2012 01:08 AM PST

mytaxi

Intelligent Apps, the Hamburg, Germany-based startup behind popular taxi ordering smartphone application myTaxi, has raised 10 million euros in growth funding from car2go, a subsidiary of Daimler, Germany's third largest carmaker. XING and Hackfwd founder Lars Hinrichs also participated in the financing round, as did previous backers T-Venture (Deutsche Telekom) and KfW Bankengruppe.

According to Bloomberg Businessweek, Daimler took a 15 percent stake in the mobile apps developer.

Intelligent Apps claims myTaxi has a market share of no less than 80 percent in Europe, and is still growing fast. The app has been downloaded 800,000 times to date, and 7,000 taxi drivers have registered for the service so far.

Read more at TechCrunch Europe.

RIM’s New Playbook: The CEO Sneak

Posted: 22 Jan 2012 08:53 PM PST

96027_Eagles_Giants_Football

It was a big day for football fans, with both the AFC and NFC Championships taking place this afternoon and this evening. The games grab more than a few eyeballs every year — last year’s championships grabbed 54.8 million and 51.9 million viewers, respectively. While the numbers aren’t out yet for today’s games, the viewership is expected to be equally as enormous.

That’s why so many in the Twittersphere have been so quick to point out that, nestled quietly behind a hotly contested NFC Championship between the New York Giants and the San Francisco 49ers, and an equally great game over in the AFC, was a fairly huge announcement for the maker of BlackBerry, Research In Motion. During Championship Sunday, RIM quietly released a statement saying that its co-CEOs, Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, are stepping down and will be replaced by current COO for products and sales, Thorsten Hein.

It’s certainly no accident that they would make such a statement during a highly-publicized and much-watched event like the NFC and AFC Championships — even if they did benefit from close games, with one that ended in sudden death overtime. Thus, we’re calling it taking advantage of the “The CEO Sneak,” in honor of football’s time-honored play called the Quarterback Sneak. The CEO sneak is not employed as often as the quarterback sneak, so it’s good to see RIM taking advantage of the diversion to sneak in their announcement about its leadership changes.

And, again, this obviously big news for RIM, whose co-CEOs have been leading the company for the better part of decades. Unfortunately, RIM has been struggling mightily of late, and when a once-enormous public company falls on hard times, lays off thousands of employees, and loses large chunks of its market share to the competition, investors and shareholders are bound to get antsy. Many have called for new leadership, management overhauls, and even the sale of the company to a larger entity.

In fact, last year, several large investors in the Canadian mobile device company floated a proposal seeking to break up RIM’s co-CEO duo, arguing that operations (and chairman and chief executive positions) are best managed by one person. Pardon the bad joke, but you might see it as the officials throwing a flag for too many CEOs on the field.

The co-CEOs managed to retain their dual leadership, but today the pressure was too great. Both former leaders are saying that they were not forced out by the board of directors, but instead made the decision themselves, recommending that the board make Thorsten Heins the new CEO. It was a bold move to mollify its dissenters, especially in naming a new CEO that many are, at least to date, somewhat unfamiliar with in Heins. However, the new CEO will still have to contend with the shadow of the former leaders, as they will be staying on at RIM in board positions, with Lazaridis becoming vice chair.

If the former CEOs did in fact step down under their own volition, then there was no better time to let the news trickle out than on a Sunday — during the NFC Championship, when many would be distracted yelling at their TV screens and spilling beer on their remotes. And it’s certainly better than having to wait for the Super Bowl, which won’t be played until February 5th. There’s already been one notable Super Bowl Shuffle. Points to whomever comes up with the best spoof of the Super Bowl Shuffle for RIM.

If the company is confident in its new CEO and the management changes that are afoot (more in our latest post here), why hide it behind football? Why not do so proudly and boldly on a slow news day? (Granted, Sunday can be just that.)

So, what do you think readers, was this a smart move? And more importantly, do you think this management shuffle bodes well for RIM going forward? Will its stock jump on this Hail Mary, or fumble and dive? Weigh in and let us know. Let’s hope that the future of RIM is bright and won’t require a post like this.

Read RIM’s release here, and our coverage here.

And, as a bonus, here’s the guy who was leading the sneak, or being snuck, if you prefer. Can Thorsten Heins become RIM’s Tim Cook? Hard to believe so based on this video, but it is early in the game.

Image credit: AP Photo/Julio Cortez

RIM Co-CEOs To Step Down; COO To Take The Reins

Posted: 22 Jan 2012 06:32 PM PST

sadberry

I suppose some might have seen this coming. In December, Research In Motion (RIM) released their third quarter earnings, which were yet another disappointment for the struggling maker of BlackBerry. RIM Co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis announced subsequently that they would only draw yearly salaries of $1 to help combat the company’s financial woes.

Today, it seems the pressure has become too great, and a management shuffle is under way. The Globe has reported that the co-CEOs, after a year of pressure from investors and stockholders, have stepped down from the position. Company insider and current COO Thorsten Heins will be replacing them as the new chief executive.

Lazaridis and Balsillie have both led the Waterloo-based company for decades, as Lazardis founded RIM back in 1984 and later brought on Balsillie. Balsillie stepped down from his role as Chairman in 2007, but retained his position as co-CEO along with Lazaridis. Today, the founder will become vice chairman of the board along with chair of the board’s new “Innovations Committee”, and Balsillie will remain a board member — but with no functional operating role in RIM going forward, according to Bloomberg.

RIM Director Barbara Stymiest is to take over as chairman of the board, and Thorsten Heins, the current COO is now the top dog. Heins joined RIM four years ago from Siemens AG, where he was the CTO.

The struggles of the Canadian mobile device maker have been well-documented. BlackBerries reached a point of ubiquity over the last decade, especially in corporate environments, but RIM has had a difficult time keeping pace with Apple and the meteoric rise of Android. The company has also struggled to produce a viable tablet alternative, with sales of its PlayBook declining — it shipped 150,000 of these devices, the company said in its third quarter earnings, down from 200,000 in Q2.

Since laying off 2,000 employees in July of last year, RIM has gotten aggressive with its promotions and price cuts for PlayBook, but the competition continues to eat into the company’s market share, as its portion of the smartphone market dipped to 11 percent — down from 15 percent the previous year.

It’s been a very rocky road for RIM, and really it’s a sad story to watch unfold, as RIM has been one of the most valuable companies in Canada, and has ranked in the country’s top 100 employers. It also experienced one of its worst outages in history in October, and some of its top investors pushed the company to split up its co-CEO leadership last summer, which was later withdrawn.

Now, it seems, RIM’s investors have finally gotten their way, and RIM has opted to replace the Co-CEOs with an insider. Heins was previously the chief operating officer for product and sales, a position he took in August, charged with overseeing engineering, hardware and software.

In a statement released by RIM tonight, the founder said of Heins’ appointment:

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 and I went to the Board and told them that we thought that time was now. With BlackBerry 7 now out, PlayBook 2.0 shipping in February and BlackBerry 10 expected to ship later this year, the company is entering a new phase, and we felt it was time for a new leader to take it through that phase and beyond. Jim, the Board and I all agreed that leader should be Thorsten Heins.

Even though he has the full support of Balsillie, Lazaridis, and the board, Heins has a tough road ahead. Sure, many are hoping that he can help RIM turn itself around, myself included, but both RIM and Heins will have to assure investors, customers, and everyone in between, that he is not operating in the shadow of the former CEOs and will be given the necessary room to implement structural and product changes, and start catalyzing the growth and development that can help them regain lost ground.

In terms of potential for RIM moving forward, Heins said in a statement that the company still has a strong balance sheet, with $1.5 billion in cash at the end of last quarter, and little to no debt. Revenues were $5.2 billion in the third quarter, and it’s undeniable that RIM has a strong BlackBerry subscriber base — currently over 75 million.

If RIM can gain some traction with PlayBook 2.0 and BlackBerry 10, there may be a silver lining. RIM gave a sneak peak of PlayBook 2.0 at CES this year, and Devin included the company in our list of winners for this year’s CES, saying that they’re still showing that they are a “force to be reckoned with in some respects”, and that the “PlayBook is a far better tablet than it was, and that Google and Apple should take a look at some of their clever and powerful gesture and UI work”. Let’s just hope it’s not too late.

BlackBerry 10 has been delayed, leading many to speculate that there have been some problems with its development, in integrating that software with its global network, but Heins hinted to the New York Times that he wants to see BlackBerry 10 released at some point this year. After 18 months in development, it seems clear that RIM has been handicapped in its decision-making process, and unfortunately, it puts all the more pressure on the new OS to shine when it arrives. They missed with the first release of PlayBook, and have been scrambling to iterate quickly. Devin’s impressions show that it may be working, but initial poor reviews may have put the kibosh on that one.

At least it seems more determined now to play to the concerns of its detractors, rather than ignoring the problems. This may instill some confidence going forward, and with Heins in the big chair, it looks like stay-the-course is RIM’s new motto, and those buyout rumors will quiet down — at least for now.

As an addendum, I’ll say that it’s interesting to note that RIM released this news right in the midst of the NFC Championship — a highly watched TV event and one that sparks an enormous amount of coverage in traditional media and on the Web. (More here.)

Keep an eye on RIM’s stock tomorrow.

We will continue updating.