RIM CEO uses the Samsung Galaxy S III for a second phone

By: Asim on 5:20 PM

"Yes, I absolutely do [use a BlackBerry], however, just to stay educated about the market, I always have a second device that is a competitor device so I know where I am, in terms of the competition."-Thorsten Heins, RIM CEO

We'll admit that at first, when we heard that RIM CEO Thorsten Heins has a Samsung Galaxy S III for his second phone, we thought that here is someone without confidence in his own products. But after reading the interview that the executive did with CIO, and thinking about some of the dismissive comments that the previous regime made about BlackBerry's competition, we started to realize that this was actually a good thing for RIM fans.

While Mr. Heins currently uses the Samsung Galaxy S III so that he can "stay educated about the market," he says that he used to own an Apple iPhone  so that he could "understand touch devices at the entry level". Heins says that he changes his second phone on a regular basis. And while there are probably a ton of jokes that you could use in this situation, think about to the isolationist regime of Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie. Just reading some of the comments that have been attributed to the co-CEOs just as the Apple iPhone was first hitting the market made it pretty clear that neither of them had taken the time to examine the device.

One of the two new series expected to launch with the BlackBerry 10 OS

Imagine how different the history of RIM would be had Balsillie and Lazaridis done what Heins is doing. Would the BlackBerry Storm have launched at all had RIM understood the dynamics of the Apple iPhone and the touchscreen market at that time? If we do disagree with the current CEO, it is with his opinion that missing out on the change from 3G to 4G LTE was what did RIM in. We would suggest that the writing was already on the wall by November 2008 when the rushed launch of the 'half-baked' Storm showed that there was a whole new consumer segment to the smartphone business, led by the Apple iPhone, that the Canadian manufacturer was missing. The good news is that the CEO seems hell-bent on keeping BlackBerry 10 under wraps until it is absolutely ready to be launched.

Judging from the response, positive feedback and excitement that occurred when some of BlackBerry 10 was introduced during May's BlackBerry World, there is a large part of the smartphone community that is dying to see the rest of BlackBerry 10 and hopes that RIM lasts until the new handsets are rolled out. With someone at the top that sees what the public wants and is buying, there is a good chance that this time, RIM will get it right.

source: CIO via AndroidCentral