From RIM’s Conference Call: CEO Pay Cuts & Dual-Core LTE BlackBerrys

Well now, this call turned out to be much more interesting than I expected. First, RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie has just announced he and partner Mike Lazaridis will be cutting their annual salaries down to $1.

According to Forbes, both men currently receive $1,175,664 per year. While they don’t appear to receive annual bonuses, they both receive restricted stock awards, although the terms under which those stocks can vest are unknown. The news will likely be welcomed by distraught stockholders, but don’t expect Mike and Jim to suffer too much.

Mr. Lazaridis also took the opportunity to speak about the future of BlackBerry smartphones. In order to stay competitive with other manufacturers, Lazaridis said that RIM has chosen to run with a dual-core LTE-capable chipset for first BlackBerry 10 devices. The downside to the situation is that the particular chipset RIM hopes to use won’t be available until the middle of 2012.

Developing…

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