Nintendo chief rules out price cuts for Wii U

TOKYO (AP) — Nintendo‘s president Thursday ruled out price cuts for its new Wii U home console as a way to boost sales, vowing to become profitable again in its core businesses as smartphones and tablets increasingly threaten specialized game machines.

Satoru Iwata, speaking at a Tokyo hotel to investors and reporters a day after earnings were released, acknowledged the sales momentum for the Wii U, as well as the 3DS hand-held game machine, had run out of steam during the key year-end shopping season, especially in the U.S.

But he said no price cuts were in the works. Price cuts are common in the gaming industry to woo buyers, but the move can backfire by trimming revenue. The Wii U now sells for about $ 300 in the U.S. and 25,000 yen in Japan.

“We are already offering it at a good price,” he said.

Iwata said he expects operating profit of more than 100 billion yen in the 12 months ending March 2014, promising that as “a commitment.”

But he acknowledged more work was needed to have consumers understand the Wii U, which went on sale globally late last year, as well as producing more game software to draw buyers.

All game machines have suffered in recent years from the advent of smartphones and other mobile devices that have become more sophisticated and offer games and other forms of entertainment.

Nintendo returned to net profit for the April-December period of 2012 from deep losses the previous year, but that was due to a perk from a weaker yen, which helps Japanese exporters such as Nintendo.

Its operating result, which removes currency fluctuations, was a loss of 5.86 billion yen ($ 64 million), and Nintendo expects that to swell to a 20 billion yen ($ 220 million) loss for the full business year ending March 2013 as sales of its game consoles fall short of expectations.

Iwata said Nintendo is preparing more game software, including those developed in-house, for the end of this year.

Kyoto-based Nintendo, which makes Super Mario and Pokemon games, lowered its full year sales forecast Wednesday to 670 billion yen ($ 7.4 billion) from 810 billion yen ($ 8.9 billion). It also said it was going to sell fewer Wii U consoles for the fiscal year through March than its previous projection. The Wii U has a touch-screen tablet controller called GamePad and a TV-watching feature called TVii.

The company forecasts it will sell 4 million Wii U consoles for the current fiscal year, ending March 31, down from its earlier estimate of 5.5 million units. The Wii U, which went on sale late last year, was the first major new game console to arrive in stores in years.

Nintendo, also behind the Donkey Kong and Zelda games, lowered its full year sales forecast for Wii U game software units to 16 million from 24 million.

Iwata said last year holiday sales quickly dissipated in the U.S. and some European nations, including Great Britain, the key market. He said the U.S. home console sales were the worst for Nintendo in nearly a decade.

He said Nintendo needs hit games to push console sales, and the company remains confident Wii U will prove more popular with time.

“The chicken-and-game problem has not been solved,” he said of the need for both game software and machine hardware.

“I feel a deep sense of responsibility for not being able to produce results for our year-end business,” said Iwata.

He declined to say what he would do if the company failed to attain the promised operating profits.

Nintendo sank into a loss the previous fiscal year largely because of price cuts for its hand-held 3DS game machine, which shows three-dimensional imagery without special glasses. That machine is also struggling in most global markets.

Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo’s famed game designer, said what was missing were games for the Wii U that made its appeal clear. The progress in smartphones has also posed a challenge for Nintendo, he said.

“People have to try it to see it is fun,” Miyamoto said of Wii U.

___

Follow Yuri Kageyama on Twitter at www.twitter.com/yurikageyama

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Beyonce to finally face media at Super Bowl

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Beyonce is expected to face the media Thursday as she previews her halftime performance at the Super Bowl. But the focus will likely be on her performance at that other big event earlier this month.

The superstar hasn't spoken publicly since it was alleged that she lip-synched her rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner" at President Barack Obama's inauguration. Since she hasn't addressed the controversy, it's expected the topic will be the main focus of her afternoon press conference in New Orleans.

The Super Bowl halftime performer usually talks about the halftime show. On occasion, some acts have performed for the media.

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Well: Waiting for Alzheimer's to Begin

My gray matter might be waning. Then again, it might not be. But I swear that I can feel memories — as I’m making them — slide off a neuron and into a tangle of plaque. I steel myself for those moments to come when I won’t remember what just went into my head.

I’m not losing track of my car keys, which is pretty standard in aging minds. Nor have I ever forgotten to turn off the oven after use, common in menopausal women. I can always find my car in the parking lot, although lots of “normal” folk can’t.

Rather, I suddenly can’t remember the name of someone with whom I’ve worked for years. I cover by saying “sir” or “madam” like the Southerner I am, even though I live in Vermont and grown people here don’t use such terms. Better to think I’m quirky than losing my faculties. Sometimes I’ll send myself an e-mail to-do reminder and then, seconds later, find myself thrilled to see a new entry pop into my inbox. Oops, it’s from me. Worse yet, a massage therapist kicked me out of her practice for missing three appointments. I didn’t recall making any of them. There must another Nancy.

Am I losing track of me?

Equally worrisome are the memories increasingly coming to the fore. Magically, these random recollections manage to circumnavigate my imagined build-up of beta-amyloid en route to delivering vivid images of my father’s first steps down his path of forgetting. He was the same age I am now, which is 46.

“How old are you?” I recall him asking me back then. Some years later, he began calling me every Dec. 28 to say, “Happy birthday,” instead of on the correct date, Dec. 27. The 28th had been his grandmother’s birthday.

The chasms were small at first. Explainable. Dismissible. When he crossed the street without looking both ways, we chalked it up to his well-cultivated, absent-minded professor persona. But the chasms grew into sinkholes, and eventually quicksand. When we took him to get new pants one day, he kept trying on the same ones he wore to the store.

“I like these slacks,” he’d say, over and over again, as he repeatedly pulled his pair up and down.

My dad died of Alzheimer’s last April at age 73 — the same age at which his father succumbed to the same disease. My dad ended up choosing neurology as his profession after witnessing the very beginning of his own dad’s forgetting.

Decades later, grandfather’s atrophied brain found its way into a jar on my father’s office desk. Was it meant to be an ever-present reminder of Alzheimer’s effect? Or was it a crystal ball sent to warn of genetic fate? My father the doctor never said, nor did he ever mention, that it was his father’s gray matter floating in that pool of formaldehyde.

Using the jarred brain as a teaching tool, my dad showed my 8-year-old self the difference between frontal and temporal lobes. He also pointed out how brains with Alzheimer’s disease become smaller, and how wide grooves develop in the cerebral cortex. But only after his death — and my mother’s confession about whose brain occupied that jar — did I figure out that my father was quite literally demonstrating how this disease runs through our heads.

Has my forgetting begun?

I called my dad’s neurologist. To find out if I was in the earliest stages of Alzheimer’s, he would have to look for proteins in my blood or spinal fluid and employ expensive neuroimaging tests. If he found any indication of onset, the only option would be experimental trials.

But documented confirmation of a diseased brain would break my still hopeful heart. I’d walk around with the scarlet letter “A” etched on the inside of my forehead — obstructing how I view every situation instead of the intermittent clouding I currently experience.

“You’re still grieving your father,” the doctor said at the end of our call. “Sadness and depression affect the memory, too. Let’s wait and see.”

It certainly didn’t help matters that two people at my father’s funeral made some insensitive remarks.

“Nancy, you must be scared to death.”

“Is it hard knowing the same thing probably will happen to you?”

Maybe the real question is what to do when the forgetting begins. My dad started taking 70 supplements a day in hopes of saving his mind. He begged me to kill him if he wound up like his father. He retired from his practice and spent all day in a chair doing puzzles. He stopped making new memories in an all-out effort to preserve the ones he already had.

Maybe his approach wasn’t the answer.

Just before his death — his brain a fraction of its former self — my father managed to offer up a final lesson. I was visiting him in the memory-care center when he got a strange look on his face. I figured it was gas. But then his eyes lit up and a big grin overtook him, and he looked right at me and said, “Funny how things turn out.”

An unforgettable moment?

I can only hope.

---

Nancy Stearns Bercaw is a writer in Vermont. Her book, “Brain in a Jar: A Daughter’s Journey Through Her Father’s Memory,” will be published in April 2013 by Broadstone.

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U.N.’s Ban Decries ‘Horrors’ in Syria, Urging End to War

KUWAIT (Reuters) - Denouncing "unrelenting horrors" in Syria's war, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appealed on Wednesday for an end to the violence and more aid to address a situation he said was catastrophic and worsening by the day.

"How many more people will be killed if the current situation continues?" Ban said, addressing a donors conference in Kuwait aimed at raising money for U.N. humanitarian work.

"I appeal to all sides and particularly the Syrian government to stop the killing ... in the name of humanity, stop the killing, stop the violence," the U.N. leader said.

Syrian opposition activists said at least 65 people were found shot dead with their hands bound in the embattled northern city of Aleppo on Tuesday, the latest reported massacre over the course of 22 months of conflict.

They blamed militiamen loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, while the government blamed the Islamist rebel Nusra Front. It was impossible to confirm who was responsible given Syria's restrictions on access for independent media.

More than 60,000 people have been killed in all, according to a U.N. estimate, since the conflict began as a peaceful movement for democratic reform and escalated into an armed rebellion after Assad tried to crush the unrest by force.

An official of the Gulf Cooperation Council, a grouping of six Gulf Arab states, said a total of $1 billion had been pledged at the meeting by midday, after promises of $300 million each from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.

The United Nations warned on Monday that without more money it would not be able to help millions of Syrians and appealed for donations at the aid conference to meet its $1.5 billion target.

Four million Syrians inside the country need food, shelter and other aid and more than 700,000 more are estimated to have fled to countries nearby.

SCALE OF CRISIS ESCALATES

King Abdullah of Jordan told the gathering that Syrians had taken refuge in his country in their hundreds of thousands but Amman's ability to help was at its limits. "We have reached the end of the line, we have exhausted our resources," he said.

U.N. humanitarian chief Valerie Amos said that Syrian agriculture was in crisis, hospitals and ambulances had been damaged and even painkillers were unavailable.

Harsh winter weather had made matters worse, and people lack winter clothes, blankets and fuel, with women and children particularly at risk, she said, adding:

"We are watching a human tragedy unfold before our eyes."

The conference was seeking pledges of $1 billion of aid for Syria's neighbors hosting refugees and another $500 million to fund humanitarian work for 4 million Syrians afflicted by the civil war inside the country.

The aid would fund operations for the first half of this year, but the United Nations has so far received pledges covering just 18 percent of the target, unveiled last month as the scale of Syria's humanitarian crisis escalated sharply.

Even if pledges are made, aid groups have found in the past that converting promises into hard cash can take time.

Nevertheless, there was early positive news for the gathering when the oil-rich states of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the UAE each pledged $300 million in aid.

Kuwait's emir, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah, told the meeting "horrifying reports" of violence had raised questions about Syria's future and aid efforts had to be redoubled.

SEXUAL VIOLENCE, DETENTIONS

But Ban said much more remained to be done. "The situation in Syria is catastrophic and getting worse every day," he said.

"Every day Syrians face unrelenting horrors," he said, including sexual violence and detentions.

Iran, a close ally of Assad, said the blame for the humanitarian crisis lay with opposition fighters who had come to Syria from abroad.

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said the government and its Syrian opponents should "sit and talk and form a transitional government".

"Those who are causing these calamities are mercenaries who have come to Syria from outside the country," he said. For an interactive timeline on Syria, please click on http://link.reuters.com/rut37s

(Reporting by Sylvia Westall, Ahmed Hagagy, Sami Aboudi, Mahmoud Habboush and Mirna Sleiman; Writing by William Maclean; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

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RIM to debut new BlackBerry smartphones in a heavily hyped unveiling

NEW YORK, N.Y. – Following several delays and much anticipation, the new BlackBerry smartphones will be unveiled this morning in New York.

Research In Motion (TSX:RIM), the company behind the once dominant smartphones, is holding a splashy event in Manhattan to usher in the new devices, which were originally due for release last year.

The debut is expected to showcase the device as well as provide key launch details.

That will likely include its release date, which is expected in the next four to six weeks, the phone’s features and how much it will cost.

The company says the new BlackBerry will be released first in a touchscreen version, while a keypad alternative will follow in the weeks or months afterward.

The new phone launch is RIM’s attempt to regain its position in the highly competitive North American and European smartphone markets, which are now dominated by iPhone and Android devices.

While the first hurdles to overcome are the opinions of tech analysts and investor reaction, the true measure of success — actual sales of the phones — is still weeks away.

The BlackBerry has dramatically lost marketshare in recent years after a series of blunders.

Several network outages left customers without the use of the smartphones they had come to rely on, while the BlackBerry’s hardware hasn’t received a significant upgrade in years.

RIM chief executive Thorsten Heins has already offered a glimpse of some features on the new devices. They include BlackBerry Balance technology, which allows one phone to operate as both a business and personal device entirely separate from each other.

The new BlackBerry will also let users seamlessly shift between the phone’s applications like they’re flipping between pages on a desk.

In the coming weeks, RIM will launch an advertising blitz to promote the phones, including aggressive social media campaigning, which includes plugs from celebrities on their Twitter accounts, and a 30-second advertisement on the Super Bowl, the most watched television program of the year.

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Roseanne Barr to guest star on NBC's 'The Office'

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Roseanne Barr is dropping into NBC's "The Office."

The network said Barr will guest star as a talent agent named Carla Fern in scenes set to tape Wednesday. The agent agrees to help office manager Andy Barnard realize his show business dream. Series regular Ed Helms plays Andy.

Barr is taking a break from her stand-up comedy act in Las Vegas for "The Office" visit. The workplace comedy is in its final season, and producer Greg Daniels has promised a memorable end after nine years.

"The Office," adapted from the British series of the same name, ranks among NBC's most popular shows. Barr knows something about bringing a long-running hit to an end: Her sitcom "Roseanne" aired from 1988 to 1997.

___

Online:

http://www.nbc.com/the-office/

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The New Old Age Blog: For Some Caregivers, the Trauma Lingers

Recently, I spoke at length to a physician who seems to have suffered a form of post-traumatic stress after her mother’s final illness.

There is little research on this topic, which suggests that it is overlooked or discounted. But several experts acknowledge that psychological trauma of this sort does exist.

Barry Jacobs, a clinical psychologist and author of “The Emotional Survival Guide for Caregivers” (The Guilford Press, 2006), often sees caregivers who struggle with intrusive thoughts and memories months and even years after a loved one has died.

“Many people find themselves unable to stop thinking about the suffering they witnessed, which is so powerfully seared into their brains that they cannot push it away,” Dr. Jacobs said.

Flashbacks are a symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder, along with feelings of numbness, anxiety, guilt, dread, depression, irritability, apathy, tension and more. Though one symptom or several do not prove that such a condition exists — that’s up to an expert to determine — these issues are a “very common problem for caregivers,” Dr. Jacobs said.

Dolores Gallagher-Thompson, a professor of psychiatry at the Stanford University School of Medicine who treats many caregivers, said there was little evidence that caregiving on its own caused post-traumatic stress. But if someone is vulnerable for another reason — perhaps a tragedy experienced earlier in life — this kind of response might be activated.

“When something happens that the individual perceives and reacts to as a tremendous stressor, that can intensify and bring back to the forefront of consciousness memories that were traumatic,” Dr. Gallagher-Thompson said. “It’s more an exacerbation of an already existing vulnerability.”

Dr. Judy Stone, the physician who was willing to share her mother’s end-of-life experience and her powerful reaction to it, fits that definition in spades.

Both of Dr. Stone’s Hungarian parents were Holocaust survivors: her mother, Magdus, called Maggie by family and friends, had been sent to Auschwitz; her father, Miki, to Dachau. The two married before World War II, after Maggie left her small village, moved to the city and became a corset maker in Miki’s shop.

Death cast a long shadow over the family. During the war, Maggie’s first baby died of exposure while she was confined for a time to the Debrecen ghetto. After the war, the family moved to the United States, where they worked to recover a sense of normalcy and Miki worked as a maker of orthopedic appliances. Then he died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 50.

“None of us recovered from that,” said Dr. Stone, who traces her interest in medicine and her lifelong interest in fighting for social justice to her parents and trips she made with her father to visit his clients.

Decades passed, as Dr. Stone operated an infectious disease practice in Cumberland, Md., and raised her own family.

In her old age, Maggie, who her daughter describes as “tough, stubborn, strong,” developed macular degeneration, bad arthritis and emphysema — a result of a smoking habit she started just after the war and never gave up. Still, she lived alone, accepting no help until she reached the age of 92.

Then, in late 2007, respiratory failure set in, causing the old woman to be admitted to the hospital, then rehabilitation, then assisted living, then another hospital. Maggie had made her preferences absolutely clear to her daughter, who had medical power of attorney: doctors were to pursue every intervention needed to keep her alive.

Yet one doctor sent her from a rehabilitation center to the hospital during respiratory crisis with instructions that she was not to be resuscitated — despite her express wishes. Fortunately, the hospital called Dr. Stone and the order was reversed.

“You have to be ever vigilant,” Dr. Stone said when asked what advice she would give to families. “You can’t assume that anything, be it a D.N.R. or allergies or medication orders, have been communicated correctly.”

Other mistakes were made in various settings: There were times that Dr. Stone’s mother had not received necessary oxygen, was without an inhaler she needed for respiratory distress, was denied water or ice chips to moisten her mouth, or received an antibiotic that can cause hallucinations in older people, despite Dr. Stone’s request that this not happen. “People didn’t listen,” she said. “The lack of communication was horrible.”

It was a daily fight to protect her mother and make sure she got what she needed, and “frankly, if I hadn’t been a doctor, I think I would have been thrown out of there,” she said.

In the end, when it became clear that death was inevitable, Maggie finally agreed to be taken off a respirator. But rather than immediately arrange for palliative measures, doctors arranged for a brief trial to see if she could breathe on her own.

“They didn’t give her enough morphine to suppress her agony,” Dr. Stone recalled.

Five years have passed since her mother died, and “I still have nightmares about her being tortured,” the doctor said. “I’ve never been able to overcome the feeling that I failed her — I let her down. It wasn’t her dying that is so upsetting, it was how she died and the unnecessary suffering at the end.”

Dr. Stone had specialized in treating infectious diseases and often saw patients who were critically ill in intensive care. But after her mother died, “I just could not do it,” she said. “I couldn’t see people die. I couldn’t step foot in the I.C.U. for a long, long time.”

Today, she works part time seeing patients with infectious diseases on an as-needed basis in various places — a job she calls “rent a doc” — and blogs for Scientific American about medical ethics. “I tilt at windmills,” she said, describing her current occupations.

Most important to her is trying to change problems in the health system that failed her mother and failed her as well. But Dr. Stone has a sense of despair about that: it is too big an issue, too hard to tackle.

I’m grateful to her for sharing her story so that other caregivers who may have experienced overwhelming emotional reactions that feel like post-traumatic stress realize they are not alone.

It is important to note that both Dr. Jacobs and Dr. Gallagher-Thompson report successfully treating caregivers beset by overwhelming stress. It is hard work and it takes time, but they say recovery is possible. I’ll give a sense of treatment options they and others recommend in another post.

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Nintendo Warns of Weak Wii U Sales

TOKYO — Nintendo expects to sell far fewer units of its Wii U game console than it expected, the Japanese video game maker said Wednesday, slashing its sales outlook for its flagship device just two months after its release.

Nintendo has a lot riding on the Wii U, the successor to the Wii, which revolutionized the gaming industry six years ago with a casual approach that brought video games to new audiences. Nintendo is banking on the Wii U to revive its fortunes after the disappointing launch in 2011 of its handheld gaming machine, the 3DS, which forced the company to slash prices to stoke demand.

Nintendo executives had also said the Wii U would prove that dedicated game systems still have a future in a world now teeming with cheaper, more convenient mobile games played on smartphones and tablets.

The latest numbers from Nintendo are not promising. The company said it had sold 3.06 million Wii Us, and said it expected sales to hit just 4 million units through March, almost 30 percent less than a previous projection of 5.5 million.

Nintendo also downgraded its 3DS sales expectations, saying it would sell 15 million units through March, short of its previous forecast of 17.5 million units, and said it expected to sell less gaming software.

Still, the yen weakened in 2012, which lowers costs and bolsters earnings of Japanese exporters. That helped Nintendo return to the black for the first nine months of its business year. Net profit from April to December came to ¥14.55 billion, or $160 million, compared with a ¥48.35 billion loss in the same period last year, the company said in an earnings announcement that painted a mixed picture of its prospects.

The company raised its profit forecast for the business year through March to ¥14 billion, from ¥6 billion. Nintendo does not break out quarterly results.

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At Least 20 Killed in Kazakhstan Plane Crash

ALMATY, Kazakhstan (AP) — A passenger jet carrying at least 20 people crashed Tuesday in heavy fog near Kazakhstan's principal city, Almaty, killing all on board, the airline and officials said.

The Kazakh Prosecutor-General's office listed 21 people as having been killed. The SCAT airline said the plane carried 20.

The accident highlights persistent concerns over aviation safety in Kazakhstan, almost all of whose airlines are banned from flying to Western Europe.

Officials said the plane, flying in from the northern city of Kokshetau, disappeared from radar view at around 13:13 p.m. local time (0713 GMT), more than 20 minutes after it has been scheduled to land.

State news agency Kazinform cited an emergency official at the site of the crash as saying the plane was initially denied permission to land by the airport due to poor visibility.

The plane then made a second approach, but lost its bearings and crashed a few miles from the airport, the official said.

The Emergencies Ministry said the plane was a Canadian-built Bombardier CRJ200, a two-engine regional jet that can accommodate about 50 passengers.

SCAT said the cause for the crash will not be determined until flight recorder data are examined.

Unusually intense snowfalls and fog have been causing chronic flight delays across the Central Asian nation over the past few weeks.

Kazinform reported that the plane had undergone repairs in Slovenia four months ago.

The General Prosecutor's Office said it is opening a criminal investigation into the airline, which is usual in such cases. Prime Minister Serik Akhmetov ordered the creation of a state commission to investigate the crash.

In a statement on his official website, President Nursultan Nazarbayev expressed his sorrow for those killed.

"On behalf of the people of Kazakhstan and myself, I express deep condolences to the bereaved families," the statement said.

This is the second major aircraft accident recently in Kazakhstan. In December, 27 people died when an An-72 military plane crashed near the southern city of Shymkent during violent snowstorms.

SCAT, which is based in Shymkent, is banned from flying within the European Union. The company operates regional flights within Kazakhstan, a country of 16.5 million people spread across an area four times the size of Texas.

Many of Kazakhstan's airlines still operate old Soviet-era planes and some regional airports are poorly maintained. EU officials are also concerned about poor training of staff.

Only one airline in Kazakhstan, state-owned Air Astana, is authorized to fly to the EU.

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Troubled smartphone pioneer RIM prepares to raise the curtain on BlackBerry 10

NEW YORK, N.Y. – After several technical blunders, two unexpected delays and one major shakeup in its leadership, BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion is about to raise the curtain for its new smartphone devices in hopes that consumers share the excitement.

The unveiling of the phones and operating system on Wednesday marks the start of an advertising blitz that will stretch to social media, the Super Bowl and beyond as RIM tries to regain the cool factor that was once firmly in its grasp.

If all goes according to plan, the event will also mark the end of a troublesome 12 months that has seen RIM try to stay afloat while its future was constantly in question by outsiders, and its stock price tumbled to the lowest level in about a decade.

While the first hurdles to overcome on Wednesday are the opinions of tech analysts and investor reaction, the true measure of success — actual sales of the phones — is still weeks away.

As a crowd of thousands gathers Wednesday at Pier 36, a massive entertainment venue on the shores of Manhattan, chief executive Thorsten Heins will step onto the stage holding the BlackBerry that has been at once considered the company’s last hope, but also its biggest hurdle.

Just over a year ago, when Heins took over the top spot at RIM, the smartphone maker was in a state of flux as its marketshare tumbled in North America against growing competition from Apple’s iPhone and various devices on the Android operating system.

Analysts had widely blamed the lack of leadership from former co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis as the reasons that RIM failed to innovate its way out of trouble, but they also said that Heins had much to prove in hardly any time.

The company was in a bubble, insisting that it hadn’t lost its footing in the smartphone industry, even though from the outside their downfall was indisputable.

But as the dust settled from Balsillie’s exit in March 2012, Heins began to face the realities of RIM’s problems and launched a major overhaul of its middle management and deep cuts to its operations.

While Heins preferred to call it removing a “little fat on the hips,” the changes at RIM were a far more strategic and complex surgery.

The company closed some of its manufacturing facilities and announced plans to lay off about 5,000 workers, as it aimed to save $ 1 billion across RIM’s operations by February 2013. Heins reached that savings goal, and he did it three months ahead of schedule.

“He is probably one of the least dogmatic people at RIM,” said Carl Howe, vice-president of consumer research at Yankee Group.

“I think he learned from his predecessors.”

Despite all of the changes, Heins was still up against the fact that development of the BlackBerry 10 operating system was woefully behind schedule. Already delayed from a launch in 2011, the CEO was forced in June to further push the debut into 2013, missing crucial sales periods like the back-to-school and Christmas holiday shopping seasons.

While analysts hated the idea of another delay, it also bought the company some extra time to tweak the software to capitalize on the weaknesses of competitors’ smartphones.

One of those features is the BlackBerry Balance technology, which allows one phone to operate as both a business and personal device entirely separate from each other. Another one lets users seamlessly shift between the phone’s applications like they’re flipping between pages on a desk.

The BlackBerry Messenger chat program will also get an update that includes video chat and screen sharing options.

RIM’s executives also began an aggressive campaign last year to win the developer community. Under its previous leadership, the BlackBerry had practically ignored the growing popularity of smartphone applications for services like Netflix, Skype and Instagram.

A sea of change was coming under its new leaders, and Heins had managed to at least steady a company that was swaying on its pillars by coming up with unconventional ideas.

As the BlackBerry lost steam in North America and Europe, he turned to developing countries like Indonesia and Nigeria to keep revenues flowing in the near term. In those places, consumers were hungry for low-cost smartphones and the BlackBerry was still considered a status symbol.

The decision helped RIM keep its subscriber base steady, and maintain its $ 2-billion cash reserve, which was set aside for emergencies. It will use some of that money to promote the new phones.

“Up until now I think everything (Heins) laid out in terms of his plan … he’s shown that he’s executed on it,” said Richard Tse, an analyst at Cormark Securities Inc.

“In terms of what they’ve done on the development side, in terms of streamlining the operations and preserving the cash, I think he’s done a very good job to date.”

Investors aren’t satisfied with all of his decisions, however, especially when Heins unveiled a rough plan in December that will likely eat into the lucrative service fees charged to BlackBerry subscribers.

Heins told analysts on its most recent earnings conference call that RIM plans to launch an a la carte menu of services where both enterprise customers and casual smartphone users can pick their packages. The change would likely mean reduced revenues in one of the most lucrative areas of its business.

Even on the dawn of the new BlackBerry unveiling, there are still questions about whether RIM will exist in its current form this time next year. Some analysts have said the company will eventually be forced to sell off at least its hardware division, if not more.

“They’re in such a difficult position that I can’t think of a management change that would help them get out of it,” Tim Long of BMO Capital Markets.

“Clearly there are people out there that think the BlackBerry 10 is going to be something that gets them back on the map. We don’t think so.”

Long said his checks within the mobile phone industry have shown that carriers aren’t particularly interested in RIM’s touchscreen smartphone, but they’re more anxious for the keypad version, or QWERTY phone, due sometime after the initial launch.

“We think that’s an issue,” he said.

If the stock price is any sign, RIM’s investors are at least more confident this month then they’ve been in a long time. As of Monday’s closing price, RIM’s shares have risen 167 per cent from its lowest level in about a decade, reached in September, on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

Several analysts have boosted their target prices for the company’s stock in the past two weeks.

Whatever happens after the new BlackBerrys are unveiled, it’s certain that RIM isn’t in the clear yet.

“Product transitions are always pretty ugly,” said Howe.

“The good news is if you can get yourself through to the other side … you have an opportunity to disrupt the market yourself.”

Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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