In a bold move (if I do say so myself), we’ve renamed the company to reflect our brand. Research In Motion (RIM) is now officially named BlackBerry. Seconds ago on stage at the BlackBerry 10 global launch event, Thorsten Heins made the announcement to press and advocates from around the world.

“From this point forward — we are BlackBerry. One brand. One promise. Our customers use a BlackBerry, our employees work for BlackBerry, and our shareholders are owners of BlackBerry.”

To explain this move further, I sat down with Frank Boulben, CMO, earlier this week in New York City. Check out the interview below.

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

As we wrote last week, RIM was founded in 1984 – that’s almost 30 years of heritage built into the BlackBerry brand. Reflecting on this change, I believe Thorsten put it best when he said:

“We are now, more than ever, a company united in our vision for mobile computing and it all starts today with our renaming and with the global launch of BlackBerry 10.”

It’s a new day, a new name and new products. We are BlackBerry – please share your thoughts on the change with us in the comments.

It’s been challenging, yet exciting at Research In Motion® (RIM ®) as we prepare for the transition to the new (and amazing) BlackBerry® 10 operating system. No doubt, we’ve got a fighting spirit and developed some thick skin being the brunt of jokes, rumors and speculation. Hey, we’re all for competition, and a jab here and there keeps us on our toes. Not only do we believe in BlackBerry 10, but we are proud to be a part of RIM.

Time and time again you’ve heard it from us, and our position is not changing. So, listen instead to the millions in our extended #ProudToBeTeamBlackBerry family who have boldly and consistently shared their opinions here, on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and across our social communities. We’ve highlighted just a few below…

Some people think @blackberry users are the Black Sheep of the industry. I'd rather be a Black Sheep than an iSheep any day #BB10Believe—
Mike Magliocchi (@mike_mags) October 16, 2012

I'm NOT ashamed of MY BlackBerry: nytimes.com/2012/10/16/tec… @BlackBerry #TeamBlackBerry—
Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) October 16, 2012

Proud member of #TeamBlackBerry and team #blacksheep—
Joe Scheller (@NightRunner82) October 16, 2012

80 million+ people hold their @blackberry with pride #nytimes plays iGame.—
Fido Web Hosting (@fidowebhosting) October 16, 2012

Even if I broke it, I still love my @BlackBerry 9800. Haters gonna hate, but for #BB10 I'll wait. #BB10Believe #NotEmbarrassed—
Seb H Miller (@shebmiller) October 16, 2012

@nytimes I love my @BlackBerry #teamBlackBerry FTW let the revolution begin!!!!!—
Jackson *jackpot* (@JTVU01) October 16, 2012

We remain steadfastly devoted to each of you, appreciative of your support and honored to share what’s to come. Share why you’re proud to have your BlackBerry with us in the comments below.

Last week our CEO, Thorsten Heins, spent some time in New York speaking with the media and carrier partners about BlackBerry® 10 – the devices, the platform and what both represent for the future of RIM®.

Here’s what a few of them had to say:

• The Financial Times’ Paul Taylor wrote, “The new handsets will aim to change the way people use smartphones by exploiting the multitasking capabilities of the new hardware and software and threading together applications rather than requiring users to stop using one app in order to open up another.”
• Hugo Miller of Bloomberg News noted that “BB10, which has an improved Web browser and the ability to jump between applications while they continue running, is the linchpin of RIM’s efforts to regain market share from Apple Inc. and Google Inc. Licensing the new software to other manufacturers may help bolster investors’ confidence in the operating system.”
• In an article by Will Connors of The Wall Street Journal, he wrote that “One carrier executive who has seen presentations of recent versions of the phone said he thinks it is a marked improvement over its existing devices and potentially gets the company more competitive with Android.” And in the same article, Mark Siegel from AT&T stated, “We value our relationship with RIM and look forward to working with them on existing and new products.”
• And with regard to the look and feel of the new BlackBerry 10 smartphones, Joshua Topolsky from The Verge commented that, “The QWERTY device also has a touchscreen, but is styled in the classic vein of the Bold line. It’s a handsome phone.”

With BlackBerry® Jam Americas right around the corner, we’re ramping up for a lot more BlackBerry 10 content. Come back often for the latest and greatest.

It’s been an honor to be a part of conversations with enterprise customers during a major transition for Research In Motion® (RIM®). We’ve had many valuable questions sent to us, and we’re taking the opportunity to get answers from Robin Bienfait, Chief Information Officer (CIO) for RIM. Robin oversees the Enterprise Business Unit, BlackBerry Operations, Customer Service, and Corporate IT functions. In short, she plays a major role in leading the vision for BlackBerry enterprise solutions, and the execution of making that vision a reality. Check out our chat below:

Hi Robin, thanks for joining me today! I’m looking forward to representing our enterprise customers and voicing the questions that they have.

My pleasure Luke, it’s both a challenging time and a very exciting time for us at the moment, and I’m glad I can help to address our customers’ concerns directly.

Can you tell me a bit about your background and the role that you play with our enterprise customers?

Our customers are the reason we do what we do every day. My job is to meet customers where they’re at and help bring solutions to them that work best for their environment. I spent 22+ years at AT&T through all sorts of engineering and network operations leadership roles. When I left AT&T to join RIM over 5 years ago, I had led 30,000 people all dedicated to building a scalable and reliable enterprise class network. During that time, I interacted with enterprise customers on a daily basis, as I continue to do today. I believe it’s important to get to know the different pieces of a business – it’s not just about being a leader, it’s about getting involved in problems and solutions. I am 100% committed to using my experience, knowledge, and dedication to meet the needs of our enterprise customers – that’s what I’m here for.

Read more at the Inside BlackBerry for Business Blog »

The consumer market is vast, so rather than trying to be all things to all people, RIM will focus its talent base and homegrown software and services on specific areas of the consumer market where BlackBerry® excels — which includes delivering a great mobile social and productivity experience – and we will look to existing and new partnerships to provide additional compelling apps and services that customers want and love.

We understand that buying patterns are rapidly changing for both consumers and enterprise customers. Smartphones are now just as likely to be purchased by consumers and taken into work to be used as their go-to work phone, as they are to be supplied by employers and used by employees on the weekend. We feel we are uniquely positioned to deliver a smartphone that consumers will be excited to use both personally and professionally that will also satisfy their employer’s needs for security and data management.

BlackBerry® 7 was a big step forward in this journey. BlackBerry® PlayBook™ OS 2.0 is another strong example of our commitment to delivering a powerful mobile computing experience. As part of the lead up to BlackBerry® 10, we will continue to seek partnerships with application and service providers to deliver consumer features and content that are central to the BlackBerry value proposition. We believe these partnerships, combined with our core product offerings, will provide an extremely attractive experience to both consumers and our enterprise customers.

We are excited about our renewed company focus and hope our partners and customers are excited as well.

If you have questions or comments, please share them with us. We promise to read them all and come back and answer as many as we can.

Hello, #TeamBlackBerry! Community Manager Mitchell here, hoping you’ve had a great week. Are you following our @BlackBerry and @BlackBerryBlog Twitter® accounts?  If so, be sure to drop us a line and let us know what cool stuff you’re up to right now – we always love hearing what the great members of our community are up to (why not show us by taking some photos for our official BlackBerry Flickr albums?).

In this first edition of our “Inside BlackBerry” series, I am going to take you behind the scenes at Research In Motion® (RIM®) and show you one of the wonderful new additions to our workplace! We hinted at this addition to our office in one of our Facebook® posts and, after receiving a lot interest in seeing the full picture, we decided to feature it in this blog post! Now, for those of you who know what we are talking about, kudos to you; for those of you scratching your brain, we are talking about the famous Emoticon Wall!

What’s really cool about the Emoticon Wall is that it shows every single emoticon available to use on BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™), which to me is wicked awesome and super helpful. Sometimes the Emoticon Wall moves to different places in our building, sometimes in a different order, but always with those friendly BBM emoticons! I wanted to share this with you because it reminds me every day how much the #TeamBlackBerry community loves BBM, and how sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words (which is handy when you’re chatting with friends on the go!). What’s your favorite emoticon, #TeamBlackBerry? Mine has got to be TALK TO THE HAND: “>:/”.

There are a bunch of other really great displays like the Emoticon Wall around RIM. For example, in our recent Get to Know Community Manager Carolyn post, you can see my fellow Community Manager in front of our new Application Wall. Stay tuned for more pictures and stories from around RIM HQ!

Until next time,

Mitchell

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We look forward to your opinions and feedback!

[photo care of Kevin Fung]

Earlier this week Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth ll and His Royal Highness, The Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Phillip honoured Research In Motion® (RIM) with a visit to our manufacturing facility here in Waterloo, Ontario.

The royal couple was greeted by Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, RIM President and Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis, local dignitaries and hundreds of cheering admirers. After donning their smocks, the Royal Couple was taken on a tour of the manufacturing facility.

(In case you were wondering, everyone who enters onto RIM’s manufacturing production floor needs to wear an electrostatic discharge smock and footwear to help eliminate potential electrostatic charges that can be carried on clothing – even small electrostatic charges could damage the circuit board used in the BlackBerry® smartphones when they are being manufactured.)

During the tour, The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh had the opportunity to see how the BlackBerry® Bold™ 9700 smartphone is made, and to speak with some RIM employees as well.

When the tour concluded, Mike Lazaridis presented The Queen with a white BlackBerry Bold 9700 smartphone and The Duke of Edinburgh received a black BlackBerry Bold 9700 smartphone.

The Queen’s BlackBerry smartphone included a picture of children from the Queen Elizabeth Public School in Kitchener, Ontario. The children were all holding flowers and standing in front of a school sign with the message “Q.E. students welcome the Queen to KW”.

The crowd certainly seemed pleased to see The Queen, and I know RIM employees and executives were excited to be able to host this part of her visit to Canada!