Thorsten Heins Says RIM “Seriously” Considered Switching To Android

With RIM’s recent struggles, many people have suggested that the company switch to Android. Last month, RIM CEO Thorsten Heins said that switching was out of the question at this point, but in an interview with the Telegraph, the RIM Chief said that he did strongly consider it at one point.

“We took the conscious decision not to go Android,” Heins said. ”If you look at other suppliers’ ability to differentiate, there’s very little wiggle room. We looked at it seriously — but if you understand what the promise of BlackBerry is to its user base it’s all about getting stuff done. Games, media, we have to be good at it but we have to support those guys who are ahead of the game. Very little time to consume and enjoy content — if you stay true to that purpose you have to build on that basis. And if we want to serve that segment we can’t do it on a me-too approach.”

Heins has a point, switching to Android definitely wouldn’t have erased all of RIM’s struggles overnight. Look at both HTC’s and Motorola’s recent struggles with Android.

Thorsten Heins also says BlackBerry Messenger is what still attracts people to use BlackBerry.

“[BBM is] what attracts people to BlackBerry,” he said. “This is our BlackBerry experience we can deliver — there’s no other system out there where you can read, write, check if you’ve read my message. We want to make it as differentiated as possible. Going cross platform and opening up would be losing that advantage. I think there’s a huge difference between somebody who just provides the phone and the hardware and someone who provides services.”

Now that Android is out of the question for RIM, they really need to buckle down and focus on getting BB10 out the door and to consumers.

Do you think that Android would have been a good choice for RIM?