Overreactor Meltdown: RIM's Lazaridis Blows Again

April 13, 2011 at 2:35 pm PT

Research in Motion co-CEO Mike Lazaridis picked a lousy time for his latest PR gaffe.

With a little over a week to go before the launch of the company’s new PlayBook tablet, Lazaridis indignantly broke off an interview with BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones after what appeared to be a reasonable question about RIM’s national security compliance issues in India and the United Arab Emirates.

“The interview is over,” a visibly irked Lazaridis said, gesturing at the camera. “It’s just not fair. This is a national security issue. Turn that off.”

An odd response to a question for which Lazaridis arguably should have been prepared and expecting. RIM’s long-running difficulties with Gulf States and others threatening to ban its BlackBerry messenger services over national security concerns aren’t exactly irrelevant to the company’s business. And even if they were, Lazaridis certainly could have parried questions about them quite easily.

And he should have.

Because this meltdown is just one more in a string of embarrassing public displays. There was, for instance, this Dangerfieldian rant to the New York Times last week:

“Why is it that people don’t appreciate our profits? Why is it that people don’t appreciate our growth? Why is it that people don’t appreciate the fact that we spent the last four years going global? Why is it that people don’t appreciate that we have 500 carriers in 170 countries with products in almost 30 languages? I don’t fully understand why there’s this negative sentiment, and I just don’t have the time to battle it. Because in the end, what I’ve learned is you’ve just got to prove it over and over and over.”

And, of course, there was his defensive, evasive and at times completely nonsensical interview at our D:Dive Into Mobile conference last December. Video of that below:

The most unfortunate aspect of all this: Up until December, Lazaridis had arguably been the more poised of RIM’s two CEOs, playing the straightman to Jim Balsillie’s babbling boss.

Tagged with: digital, gaffe, John Paczkowski, meltdown, Mike Lazaridis, PlayBook, PR, Research In Motion, RIM

comments so far. Add yours.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_47XHGLZVO6IUYLMWVUYFVN5LQU Dr No

This unstable nutcase is one more product flop away from a shooting spree. RIM employees might want to call in sick in the days after the PlayToy (finally) hits shelves. Just sayin…
http://nigeltufnel.myopenid.com/ Nigel Tufnel

Oh my gosh, Apple now has the super-secret dual core chips that he implied would save put RIM tablets far ahead of the competition…and they have them in a shipping product. I wonder what the next smokescreen for RIM’s success will be?
http://www.facebook.com/people/Nazmul-Chowdhury/100000646247764 Nazmul Chowdhury

Pay attention what RIMM is doing with its Products, do I care what mike says. Good days are coming for RIMM I went to the Best Buy store to check Ipad2, Moto Xoom also Blackberry Playbook in case if I can find one to play with . Fortunately one of the RIMM rep came with Blackberry Playbobok, I had a chance to play with it for more than 40 minutes. All I want to say it is fantastic! Whether you like Blackberry or you don’t check this out! I tested IPAD2,XOOM and Blackberry Playbook, Playbook is way superior almost every Catagories
Anonymous

There are enough contradictions in Lazaridis’ visions of the future to split the Earth into many fragments. I thought Android was fragmented but Lazaridis’ fundementatl vision of the Have’s and the Have Not’s form the seed of madness into Lazaridis’ vision of a mobile going power hungry on multicore CPU is a recipe for madness going overboard concentrating on a old symmetric multiprocessing machine architecture about to render Lazaridis’ further disillusioning and loss in direction in regard to real world realities.
Anonymous

The Playbook prototypes I have seen are not a single bit more impressive than the eBook Nook Colors I have seen at the bookstores selling for $129. The Xoom tablet is so much more superior than the still not-for-sale Playbook. Samsung Galaxy Tab also. Not only is the Playbook a DOA already inferior to the Xoom, Galaxy Tab, and Nook Color, I found the not-for-sale Playbook not even worth comparing to the Wii, Xbox, PlayStation, Kinect.

Playbook is DOA, not worth a look.
http://twitter.com/everydaypanos Everydaypanos

OMG! How annoying! ^#P#R^(#**%@{@
http://www.facebook.com/people/Nazmul-Chowdhury/100000646247764 Nazmul Chowdhury

James, are you afraid? if people check Playbook they might like it. Is something going on between you and RIMM? I can sense hate.
Anonymous

Honestly speaking, I see Playbook as yet another Rim failure in 1) reading what the customers want, 2) responding to the marketplace in a relevant and timely manner.

Judging Rim’s successive failures without remedies yet adding to Rim’s continuous parade of Comedies of Errors, Lazaridis’ continual irrationally brash and improper public demeanors are perfectly understandable.
Anonymous

Rumor has it that James was fired from RIMM, has a hate-on, and now spends his time flaming *every* single article published in relation to RIMM.

Sure, Lazaridis has been flying off the handle and letting his emotions judge his behavior, but take a look in the mirror, James. lol
Anonymous

Steve Jobs who many here idolize would do the same thing and basically doesn’t even do 1-1 interviews outside of his circle of puppets that only ask what Apple sends them. Countless times Steve is asked questions and he sits there refusing to answer.

Did Mike over-react? Of course but considering he’s always been a little emotional / off base it’s not some odd event. The interviewing phrased the question (multiple times) the allude to RIM has a security issue and they do not. India wants control over something RIM cannot provide – period. It’s a national security issue not some technical one. Considering this is an ongoing legel issue Mike likely cannot comment on RIM’s opinion or comment on India. I’m sure Rory was told what was off limits but he wanted to go off script and it blew up in his face. Why doesn’t he ask Steve Jobs about the iPad 2 WiFi issues at Verizon?
Anonymous

Lazaridis has been known to be a very sour loser. Rim employees are indeed on high alert as Lazaridis goes nuts taking another huge setback after the failures of Storm, Tour, Pearl, Playbook, piles and piles of junk unfit for NA but fit for the offshore mud huts and ancient rural villages selling for peanuts. Rim should be heading for chapter 11 in the near future.
Anonymous

Laziridis will no doubt have made very clear what he was willing to discuss in the interview, and his manner suggests he was then targeted with a question he clearly stated was not on the agenda.

He was trying to demonstrate the Playbook not discuss a matter that has wide coverage and is clearly the subject of legal and government attention.

The real issue here was his PR guy who should be fired. In these circumstances (i.e. not a politician) no PR person should have allowed his client to be subjected to a question they were unwilling to answer. The PR guy should have stepped in to explain the rules. This is common practise in sports press conferences for example.

I’m afraid Mr Laziridis has been the subject of another unprofessional attack by a BBC reporter more interested in creating an edge than informing his viewers.

Evidently they all have enormous chips on their shoulders.

And James, if Mike Laziridis is a sore loser, I hate to think what that makes you. Just a loser I’m afraid. But pretty sore to keep up the attacks.
Anonymous

A pilot gets his plane in the air, cruises at an altitude to avoid turbulence but fails to note that the aircraft is approaching stall speed. RIMM is approaching stall speed but the management team appears to be unfocused. Looking backwards, being enamored with past accomplishments is lethal. This is a well known fact in Silicon Valley.
Anonymous

They don’t have shooting sprees in Canada.
Anonymous

PlayBook doesn’t compete with iPad, which has double the screen size.
Anonymous

Walt Mossberg gave PlayBook a better review than XOOM.
Anonymous

Not sure what Steve Jobs has to do with this, but Steve Jobs has also appeared at D recently, and he was great. Forthright, interesting, passionate.
Anonymous

They are Canadian, so bankruptcy is not called “Chapter 11.”
Anonymous

I never understood the co-CEO thing.
Anonymous

Completely agree, and furthermore, Jobs HAS done all that and more – remember antenna-gate? What’s different is not the behaviour – all these guys have out-sized egos – but media coverage – including this site. They all fawn over Jobs and rag on RIM. It’s got to be frustrating for RIM.
Anonymous

I think it’s Apple that is close to stall speed. ipad2? Virtually identical to ipad except a few new features that should have come on the original. What’s new at Apple? What have they done lately?
GeorgeS

@br14:

If Mr. Lazridis didn’t want to talk about the security issues, he could hve just said so. He didn’t have to blow up. That was unprofessional, even immature behavior. He should have expected such question and been prepared to answer them–or avoid answering, e.g., “That’s an ongoing issue and I can’t talk about the details, yet.” As much as I disliked G. W., go watch some of his press conferences. Some questions were a lot more pointed than anything Mr. Lazridis was asked, but Bush kept his cool and didn’t blow up.

As this article and many others shows, Mr. Lazridis’ actions became the news, rather than anything he had to say. He could have avoided that and has only himself to blame.
GeorgeS

@kallione:

Interesting take. How do you account for the fact that the iPad 2 is flying off the shelves? Do you expect that RIM will sell 10 million Playbooks this year? Apple sold nearly 15 million iPads in 2010. They took in $9.6B in revenue from iPad sales. That’s nearly half of ALL RIM’s revenue from ALL sources. Apple sold over 47M iPhones, with revenue of $30B from those. Add the iPhone and iPad and Apple took in a bit more than twice RIM’s total revenue for the year.
Anonymous

Here’s our coverage of Jobs at D8 for anyone interested.
Anonymous

Thanks George S – I’ll take your questions one at a time. From the accounts I have read, the ipad2 is not ‘flying off the shelves.’ Sales are steady, not stellar. No I do not expect that RIM will sell 10 million Playbooks this year – a conservative estimate is 6 million. Apple sold nearly 15 million ipads in 2010 because they were the only tablet available. If you harken back to the early days of the smartphone, you may recall that there was only one – the Blackberry. Sales were commensurate with any new ‘gotta have’ technology when you are the only game in town. I don’t think anyone (other than Apple fanboys) are expecting sales of the ipad or the iphone to continue this performance.

Now perhaps you’ll be good enough to answer MY question? What has Apple invented lately?
Anonymous

WHAT!!!
The Heck you say!!!! Just come to British Columbia and sit in the right restaurant at the wrong time!!!
We have had people gunned down who were just in a room fixing a gas leak and the Bacon Brothers had everyone in the place KILLED!
My favorite eatery on Hastings street had over two dozen bullet holes pumped into by a gan shootout…and don’t mention the Subways’ on Oak street! These MOBSTERS – gangbangers are terrorists on acid! They know bad people have to eat, too, just wish the cops would figure this out!
-nuff said-

Overreactor Meltdown: RIM's Lazaridis Blows Again

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