TAT Founder Hampus Jakobbson to Leave RIM, Has No Effect on BB10 Development

By Briley (Google)

RIM just can’t seem to get ahead, at least not as far as the media is concerned. Several news outlets exploded in a shroud of uncertainty today as RIM announced that TAT founder Hampus Jakobbson would be leaving the company with plans to launch his own startup.

The doubt stems from the fact that Jakobsson was believed to be a vital asset in the development of the Blackberry 10 OS. TAT is a startup team, that is tasked with developing the Blackberry interface design for BB10. BB10, as most of you probably already know, is supposed to be the saving grace that will essentially make, or break, the future of RIM.

Jakobsson’s Impact on BB10 Development

Realistically, Jakobsson has been the Director of Strategic Alliances at RIM since TAT was founded, and he handled a corporate level workload. So the loss of Jakobsson will have little to no impact on the development of BB10.

RIM released this statement to N4BB about Jakobbson’s impact on the development of the BB10 platform:

“RIM can confirm that Hampus Jakobsson has left his role as Director, Strategic Alliances at RIM. We wish him the best. The BlackBerry 10 UI team, which includes many members of The Astonishing Tribe, as well as others around the world, remains on track to deliver BlackBerry 10 in the first quarter of 2013.”

Jakobsson has not identified what new project he plans on being a part of nor has he spoken at all, about any “startup” ideas. At this time, we only know that Jakobsson is leaving RIM so that he can explore new territory in the tech-sphere.

As you can see from the following tweet, Jakobsson refreshingly outlines that even though he may have enjoyed working for RIM, he prefers to launch new content as a “startup-guy”.

Jakobsson is Leaving to Work on New Projects

Considering Blackberry 10 is set to launch in January, it is reasonable to assume that anything Jakobsson had to do with the new OS is out of the picture and has been completed for some time. It might even be a brilliant idea for RIM to leave the position vacant, and just divvy the corresponding workload between existing employees (provided that’s possible, of course).

If there are any fans of Jakobsson’s work out there, they may be a little disheartened to learn this story that RIM will no longer include his talents in their future endeavors. As for us, we have already shrugged the announcement off and continue to look towards the release of Blackberry 10.

RIM is Under a New Regime

Just days ago RIM appointed Alexandra Zagury, as the new MD of the South Africa region, an area that happens to contain one of the largest numbers of Blackberry subscribers.

Despite a growing list of criticisms, specifically about RIM’s failure rate, Zagury spoke with high regard for RIM’s future and pointed out that most of the critics share a remarkably biased view. RIM has a few advantages going for it that are usually ignored in light of the company’s recent hardships.

For starters, RIM has quite a large amount of money stored in excess of $2 billion, paired with an excellent credit capacity of about $350 million. On top of the strong financial backing, RIM still has 78 million mobile subscribers. When you realize that currently RIM has no debt obligations, it is not hard to see that the company isn’t exactly drowning just yet.

Here, are some more fascinating facts: out of all the Fortune 500 companies that exist today, 90% of those companies employees are customers of RIM, and out of all the JSE 300 companies that exist, 80% of those companies employees are customers of RIM.

Despite all the accusations that RIM is close to collapse, the statistics show that RIM is more than capable of making a comeback. Of course, that definitely depends on how they handle the release of the Blackberry 10 lineup.