As I write this post I suddenly start to wonder why is Research in Motion (RIM) is still Research in Motion? What are they still researching? Are they a lab? Consumers don’t know that name. They know BlackBerry. Isn’t it about time they changed the legal name of the company to BlackBerry, Inc? But I digress…

In general, it’s about time that RIM transitioned the original founders out of the company. They were innovative..in 1999. I remember when I first saw the original BlackBerry pager. It was at Microsoft’s launch of Active Directory and Exchange 2000 and it was probably 1999, maybe 2000. The device – essentially a pager that could receive email – was revolutionary at the time. Even while Palm was selling Pilots like no tomorrow BlackBerry gave people a taste of wireless messaging.

Fast forward 12 years and we are in a different world. Palm is long gone along with a slew of mediocre Windows Mobile phones (I am secretly rooting for WinMo 7 and Nokia). Our world is now filled with iPhones, iPads, Connected TVs, and a…slew… of Android devices on the market.

Consumers are also looking for “the” solution to help them with their daily connected lives. Today there are two top platforms – iOS and Android. While Apple and Google have been winning market share one has to wonder about BlackBerry. Where does it fit in?

RIM has always been focused on the hardware, which unfortunately lags behind the competition by many years. The software has been mostly ignored. And they have not won over developers because realistically, who wants to develop around what seems to be a moving target? So by letting hardware innovation lapse and practically no focus on software its hard to imagine how this ship can be turned around before it sinks into the abyss of failure.

RIM’s only hope is focus on very few products – perhaps 2 or 3 at the most – and hit it out of the park. Time is not on their side. They probably have the technical people to make it happen, but given that the only major change has been the CEO it could turn into a situation of the old guard still hanging on to failed products and roadmaps. Considering RIM’s significant presence in large companies and the government it would be unthinkable for RIM to fail.

Alex Zaltsman