One of Research In Motion Ltd.'s RIM-T top executives is moving on.
Larry Conlee, the company's chief operating officer for product development and manufacturing, is retiring at the end of the summer to spend more time with his family.
The announcement came from co-chief executive officer James Balsillie at the company's annual general meeting in Waterloo tonight.
Addressing Mr. Conlee, co-chief executive officer Mike Lazaridis said “It's been a privilege and honour to work with you. I don't have many mentors, but I count you as one of them.”
Mr. Conlee joined RIM in 2001 from Motorola, and helped the company expand its manufacturing operations and its product lines. The company has sold over 50 million BlackBerry devices. Mr. Conlee will be assisting the company during a transition period.
Mr. Balsillie touted five new BlackBerry devices that were launched during the year into “a turbulent a competitive world.” Addressing a concern about the popularity of the Apple app store in the meeting, Mr. Balsillie said: “Clearly it's something that's got more adoption. Is that really our place in the market? It's part of what we offer. But for us the core apps are there.” Mr. Balsillie pointed to the success of the BlackBerry apps for the Facebook and MySpace social networking sites.
In quarterly results announced June 18, RIM saw a small dip in its revenues, to $3.42-billion (U.S.) from $3.46-billion. But the company netted 3.8 million new subscribers, for a total of 28.5 million subscribers. and sold 7.8 million BlackBerry devices over the same period.
