Seesmic dropping BlackBerry support as RIM staff departures continue

RIM's recent troubles have continued after popular social networking tool Seesmic announced it was dropping support for the platform, another senior executive left for Samsung and layoffs began at the Canadian firm.

Social network aggregator Seesmic announced it was discontinuing support for the BlackBerry and concentrating on Apple, Android and Windows Phone 7. This is the first major tool of its type to dump the BlackBerry platform.

"We encourage those effected by this change to try out Seesmic for Android, iOS and Windows Phone 7, as well as Seesmic Desktop and Web," the company blogged.

Brian Wallace, RIM's vice president of digital marketing and media, has also confirmed he has left the company and will be taking up a new role at Samsung. His departure follows that of chief marketing officer Keith Pardy in February, and RIM's vice president of brand creativity Paul Kalbfleisch earlier in the year.

"For those asking – yup moving to Dallas with family where the weather is hot & sunny & the food is big – y'all come down for bbq anytime :-)," Wallace tweeted.

The move came as RIM began the first of the layoffs that were announced on Thursday, during an earnings call that warned of tough times ahead for the company. The news wiped 15 per cent off RIM's share price in the next day's trading and RIM's shares fell nearly seven per cent today.

Brenon Daly, the 451 Group's research director of mergers and acquisitions, commented that RIM was showing the effects of being squeezed out by Apple and Android. Palm's decision to sell out to HP for $1.2bn when it did looks now like a very smart move, he blogged, but may not bode well for the WebOS operating system.

"Since Palm became an HP business, RIM on its own has lost 80 per cent of its market value. Meanwhile, the Nasdaq is up slightly during that period," he said.

"While some of RIM's staggering decline can be traced back to the company's own missteps around product delays, its fortunes also stand as a sort of proxy for the ‘non-hot' [i.e., not Apple iOS- or Google Android-based] mobile market."