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This has to be one of the worse decisions I have heard in the last year. However, the bright side of this is that Royal Bank of Canada came up with a good idea.

There is not much one can say about the re-election of the RIM board except to say: I see another Nortel in Canada’s future. It is just a tragedy what has happened.

It appears the Co-CEOs of RIM have their board under control and have successfully hoodwinked all of the shareholders into believing they are the best people for the job. The bright side of this decision is Royal Bank of Canada’s proposal to split up RIM into two separate companies.

By splitting up the company into two separate companies, RIM may actually survive; at least one part of it will survive. Think Motorola. The idea has merit as long as this is not a disguised attempt to find each one of the Co-CEOs their own respective companies. The two companies should have new CEOs. However, that would a smart thing to do.

Will RIM’s new tablets and phones excite the market? I hope so for RIM’s sake. However, given the company’s track record thus far for smart devices I would say no. Further, the company no longer has any marketing leadership inside. Then again not having a head of marketing may not be a bad idea; to date the company’s sales and marketing plans have been dependent on the wireless carriers; does RIM really think the carriers are going to promote RIM?

My fear is that splitting up the company will simply be a way of giving Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaradis new jobs. That is, each will be a CEO of their own company. Goodness I hope this does not end up being a “let’s give a job to Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaradis” project.

What the board needs to do is strongly consider splitting up RIM.

Splitting up RIM into two companies will allow the parts to grow independently of each other or allow one part to fail without impacting the other part. In order to save RIM, breaking it up makes sense. There will be challenges ahead for a broken up RIM. For example, the network portion would have to find customers in addition to the RIM device business. The device side of the business would be forced to innovate and create a new handset in less than a year.

Will RIM be successful? Frankly, unless the company changes leadership I don’t give it a whole lot of hope.