~Blackberry Maker RIM CEOs Mike Lazaridis And Jim Balsillie Resigns~ « » Quote Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, the co-chief executives of Research In Motion, have resigned following months of investor pressure for a change at the helm of the struggling BlackBerry maker. Chief operating officer Thorsten Heins was named president and CEO of the Waterloo, Ontario-based RIM, which has been steadily losing market share to Apple's iPhone and handsets powered by Google's Android software. Heins, 54, joined RIM from German industrial giant Siemens in December 2007 and served as senior vice president for hardware engineering before becoming chief operating officer for product and sales in August 2011. "There comes a time in the growth of every successful company when the founders recognize the need to pass the baton to new leadership," Lazaridis said in a statement on Sunday.He said RIM was "entering a new phase, and we felt it was time for a new leader to take it through that phase and beyond." Barbara Stymiest, 55, was named chairman of the board, a post previously also held jointly by Balsillie and Lazaridis, who founded RIM in 1984. Stymiest, who has been on the RIM board since 2007, has held senior positions at the Royal Bank of Canada and was chief executive of TSX Group Inc., operator of the Toronto Stock Exchange. The management shakeup follows a series of setbacks for RIM including a costly delay in the launch of the BlackBerry 10, the commercial failure of the PlayBook tablet computer and an embarrassing email outage.