June 20, 2011, 7:00 PM — Shares of Research in Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM), devastated last Friday after the BlackBerry maker sharply revised down its full-year forecast and said it would cut jobs, tumbled even further Monday after Samsung Telecommunications America confirmed it has lured away a high-level marketing executive.
Brian Wallace, who was vice president of digital marketing and media for RIM, has left the Canadian company to become Samsung's vice president of strategic marketing for the U.S., Advertising Age reported.
(Also see: Former employee: RIM's leaders 'brim with hubris')
Well, that's one less person to lay off, anyway.
RIM finished regular trading down 1.86, or 6.7 percent, to 25.89, the stock's lowest price since September 2006.
Shares plunged more than 21 percent on Friday following Thursday's poor first-quarter earnings report and gloomy prognostication for the rest of the fiscal year.
Samsung sells smartphones running on Google's Android operating system, which has been primarily responsible for RIM's disastrous slide in U.S. market share. Once the market leader, RIM now is in third place in the U.S., behind Android and Apple's iPhone.
Now Wallace can quit pretending that he's marketing the best smartphone in the world. That'll probably be a big relief.
RIM's former head of marketing, Keith Pardy, left the company in March, reportedly pushed out prior to the launch of the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet.
For those of you who believe RIM's problems stem from poor marketing -- such as some of the commenters on this Wall Street Journal article about Wallace's departure -- please send me what you're smoking.
On second thought, scratch that request: I don't want to be that removed from reality. The company has fallen behind technologically, people. It's not about marketing.
Adding Insult to Injury Dept.: Social media apps company Seesmic on Monday announced it will cease supporting the BlackBerry on June 30.
The company said it was making the move "in order to focus development efforts on our most popular mobile platforms: Android, iOS and Windows Phone 7."
Windows Phone 7. Now that's just sad.
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