Investor tells RIM to sell itself or spin off patents

SMARTPHONE MAKER Research in Motion (RIM) has been urged by an investor to consider selling itself or spinning off its patent portfolio.

Vic Alboini, CEO of investor Jaguar Financial Group made the comments to Bloomberg, but would not disclose how much the firm has invested in RIM. Alboini said his plan "has the support for several large shareholders who collectively hold less than five per cent" of RIM.

RIM has come under increasing pressure in the past two years with Apple's Iphone and Android devices gobbling up its marketshare. The firm has seemingly stagnated recently with devices that lack the wow factor of high-end smartphones from Apple, HTC, Samsung and others.

Many had called into question RIM's co-CEO structure with Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, asking for the firm to set up more traditional chairman and CEO roles. RIM finally buckled, saying it would form a committee to investigate making such a move, but Alboini said that was "woefully inadequate".

RIM has an impressive portfolio of wireless patents, which is arguably the firm's greatest asset. After Google decided to pay $12.5bn for Motorola, for among other thing, its huge patent portfolio, there's no doubt that the patents held by the firm that popularised mobile e-mail messaging might be worth a few bob.

Although RIM still holds a decent chunk of the smartphone market, it is clear that unless it sorts out its management situation and produces devices that do more than just messaging very well, the company could be in danger of following Nokia out of the smartphone market. µ