Research In Motion (NASDAQ:RIMM) senior director of global developer relations Mike Kirkup has resigned his post, announcing the move on his blog. "The mobile space continues to change so quickly and this seems like a great time to step back and consider my next steps," Kirkup writes, adding "[RIM] is a great company with leaders I respect and admire." The blog post does not divulge Kirkup's future plans. RIM has not yet named his replacement.
Kirkup's exit follows a steep decline in developer interest in RIM's BlackBerry platform. Just 28 percent of developers responding to Appcelerator and IDC's recent Q3 Mobile Developer Report remain "very interested" in building apps for BlackBerry smartphones, behind Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone (90 percent) and iPad (88 percent), Google's (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android (87 percent), HTML5 (66 percent) and Microsoft's (NASDAQ:MSFT) Windows Phone (30 percent). Developers are so pessimistic about BlackBerry's future that only 4 percent believe the RIM platform can still win the battle for the enterprise segment that BlackBerry once dominated.
BlackBerry currently ranks third in U.S. smartphone market share at 19 percent, behind Android at 40 percent and Apple's iOS at 28 percent, according to Nielsen data published last week. Looking at consumers who say they are likely to purchase a new smartphone within the next year, only about 8 percent of respondents are targeting BlackBerry products.
For more:
- read Kirkup's blog post
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