Knives Come Out as RIM CEO Pledges Future for BlackBerry

If there's one thing tech-business obsessives seem to love more than a good success story, it's a good failure story. The social media schadenfreude commenced Tuesday morning as Research in Motion CEO Thorsten Heins tried to convince shareholders at the company's annual meeting that the BlackBerry has a future.

Shareholders themselves focused their ire on RIM's board for overseeing the company's plummeting fortunes, though the company's slate of directors was still voted in. Under threat of lawsuits for making statements about RIM's future that critics called overly optimistic, Heins acknowledged Tuesday that "the past year has been very difficult." He said the company planned to streamline both its management structure and product line. But the cost-cutting measure that got all the attention was RIM's reported plan to sell one of its corporate jets to save $1 billion.

As of mid-day Tuesday, Heins' comments had not inspired investors. Shares were down nearly 4 percent on the NASDAQ, hovering near their 52-week low. Meanwhile, the snark at seeing a once-powerful company fall skirted the human costs of RIM's swift decline. Along with shareholders who've seen their investments lose half their value this year, the company has spawned an unlikely tech hub in its small hometown of Waterloo, Ontario. When a Silicon Valley company shuts down, the region's robust, diversified economy typically can absorb the loss. In the town that BlackBerry built, the loss of its economic anchor would leave survivors scrambling to see if Waterloo could hold its place as a center of Canadian tech.