RIM's fast growth in years past created bureaucracy, redundancy, a loss of accountability and most of all a loss of focus, he said.

Heins has concluded after extensive and in-depth talks, especially with users, that RIM's target customers are those with a common denominator of "striving to succeed in what they are trying to do." In a mobile connected world, these people are struggling to manage the information and "channels" that they're now part of.

The RIM chief made clear this is not a smartphone issue but a mobile computing issue that includes a new generation of embedded systems and sensors, which increasingly surround users. BlackBerry 10, based on the QNX Software real-time operating system RIM acquired in 2010, is intended not as a smartphone platform but as a mobile computing platform.

For both consumers and enterprise users, "I want to provide a cutting edge mobile computing platform, and then augment it with strong partnerships with application and services providers," Heins said.

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