In a note to investors today before Research in Motion’s annual shareholder’s meeting RBC Capital Markets Managing Director Mike Abramsky, is calling for RIM to break up it network and handset businesses in to separate companies.

RIM’s organization, like its handsets, needs modernization. By acting now, splitting RIM into network and handset businesses may target opportunities and unlock significant shareholder value.  RIM’s end-to-end solution was conceived when data devices and networks were nascent — but times have changed…


This really brings up an interesting question for RIM.  There are a ton of BlackBerry users that say they will remain BlackBerry users because they don’t want to give up BBM, they continue to need to use BES, and because of the security built into RIM’s proprietary network.  Carriers like RIM’s network because it uses less data. Abramsky believes there to be a market of roughly 400 million Android devices, Windows phone devices, and tablets waiting for a cross platform push messaging, social networking, cloud and business data services network connected to almost 600  carriers around the world.

What do you think?  Would breaking apart RIM’s network and handset businesses into separate companies be a good thing for share holders?

[Via BGR]