Well now, this call turned out to be much more interesting than I expected. First, RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie has just announced that he and partner Mike Lazaridis will be cutting their annual salaries down to $1.
According to Forbes, both men currently receive $1,175,664 per year. While they don’t appear to receive annual bonuses, they both receive restricted stock awards, although the terms under which those stocks can vest are unknown. The news will likely be welcomed by distraught stockholders, but don’t expect Mike and Jim to suffer too much.
Mr. Lazaridis also took the opportunity to speak about the future of BlackBerry smartphones. In order to keep up with other manufacturers, Lazaridis said that RIM has chosen to run with a dual-core LTE-capable chipset for first BlackBerry 10 devices. Finally BlackBerry fans will have a device that’s at least mildly competitive, but they’ll have to wait even longer than expected for it.
The downside to the situation is that the particular chipset RIM hopes to use won’t be available until the middle of 2012. Astute readers may remember that the first BB10-powered devices were expected to ship around June of next year, but Lazaridis concedes that the launch window will instead come toward “the latter part of 2012.” Ouch.
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