Top 10 challenges facing RIM's new chief executive

After months of speculation that the co-chief executives of Research in Motion (RIM) were on their way out, Jim Basillie and Mike Lazaridis have finally fallen on their swords for the good of the company, and given control to Thorsten Heins.

Heins was the firm's chief operating officer and has four years of experience at RIM prior to his promotion. He was bullish he could take the company forward, although industry analysts were slightly more sceptical that he would succeed.

To help Heins settle in, V3 has put together a handy to-do list of the core challenges and issues that he must address if RIM is to haul itself out of the doldrums and remain a key player in the smartphone market.

10. Decide if the company wants consumer or enterprise customers

Although RIM has had phenomenal success in both the consumer and enterprise market, its market share is declining on both fronts in the face of tough competition from Apple and Android.

The firm's BBM service helped to shift millions of BlackBerry handsets to teenagers, but cross-platform applications such as WhatsApp have now eroded this selling point.

The firm is also experiencing difficulties in the enterprise market, including an embarrassing multi-day service outage and business users increasingly favouring the iPhone, wooed in part by the applications available and the sandbox environment of iOS.

It looks like the firm needs a major rethink and with the latest batch of BlackBerry 10 devices delayed and the firm lagging behind its rivals, RIM may be forced to choose between the consumer or the business markets, or risk becoming a bit-part player in both