Toronto: The new chief executive of BlackBerry maker Research in Motion said yesterday drastic change is not needed after the departure of Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, who stepped down as co-CEOs and co-chairmen of the once iconic but now struggling company.

The RIM founders have been replaced by Thorsten Heins, a little-known chief operating officer who joined RIM four years ago from Siemens AG, RIM said Sunday.

The Canadian company turned the email smartphone into a ubiquitous device that many could not live without, but US users have moved on to flashier touch-screen phones such as Apple's iPhone and various competing models that run Google's Android software. RIM has suffered a series of setbacks and has lost tens of billions in market value.

Heins said he didn't think significant change was needed and said the moves were not "seismic" ones. He said he was committed to the vision and new software platform favoured by Lazaridis and Balsillie, who announced on Sunday they would step down from the top jobs but serve in other roles.

Heins said RIM has to improve its US marketing to go beyond the traditional corporate customer and attract consumers.

"In the US we were very, very successful coming from the core enterprise business, and in the public opinion this is still where we're skewed to," Helms said on a conference call yesterday.

New leadership

"We need to be more marketing-driven. We need to be more consumer-oriented because this is where a lot of our growth is coming from. That is essential in the US"

RIM said last month that new phones deemed critical to the company's future would be delayed until late this year. And its PlayBook tablet, RIM's answer to the Apple iPad, failed to gain consumer support, forcing the company to deeply discount it to move the devices off store shelves.

Many shareholders and analysts have said a change or sale of the company has been needed, but the sudden departure of the two founders from their top jobs wasn't expected despite their promises that they would examine the co-CEO and co-chairmen structure.

Balsillie and Lazaridis have long been celebrated as Canadian heroes, even appearing in the country's citizenship guide for new immigrants as models of success. They headed Waterloo, Ontario-based RIM together for the past two decades.

"There comes a time in the growth of every successful company when the founders recognise the need to pass the baton to new leadership. Jim and I went to the board and told them that we thought that time was now," Lazaridis said in a statement.

Lazaridis will take on a new role as vice-chairman of RIM's board and chairman of the board's new innovation committee. Balsillie remains a member of the board.

The two remain two of RIM's biggest shareholders.