Former BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins resigns from wireless charging firm Powermat, as part of a broader revamp
His resignation is part of a larger revamp of Powermat as it looks to focus on wireless charging again. — by , Roger Cheng — Thorsten Heins is out of a job. Again.
Context & Ripple Effects
Thorsten Heins arrived at Powermat after running BlackBerry through its handset-era crisis, and his resignation lands just as the company strips its strategy back to wireless charging alone — a revamp that effectively unwinds whatever broader mandate he was brought in to execute. BlackBerry itself has long since moved on from that chapter: the company later named John Giamatteo CEO and sold the Cylance security business to Arctic Wolf for $160 million, a steep write-down from the $1.4 billion it paid, while John Chen plans his retirement after a decade in the role.
The exit also sits inside a visible cluster of mobile-hardware executive departures around this period: HTC lost design chief Jonah Becker shortly after the One M9 launch [[a:827741]], later followed by president Chialin Chang [[a:926680]], and Nokia's technologies chief Ramzi Haidamus stepped down just months after Heins [[a:874189]] — a sign that leaders from the smartphone boom were cycling out of their follow-on posts.
First-order effects
- Powermat must run a CEO search while simultaneously reversing course toward its core wireless-charging business, leaving the next leader to inherit a strategy already narrowed by the board.
- Heins is out of a job for the second time since leaving BlackBerry, closing off the most prominent post-handset role held by a former major-phone-maker CEO.
Second-order effects
- For BlackBerry, the news is symbolic rather than operational — the company has since rebuilt around QNX software and a new leadership team, making Heins' trajectory a footnote to its own restructuring.
- Powermat's refocus concentrates its fortunes entirely on wireless charging, raising the execution burden on whichever partner and licensing deals the incoming CEO can secure to justify the narrower bet.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, executives from the handset boom era face progressively shorter tenures at smaller technology firms, as those companies retreat to core intellectual property rather than broad hardware ambitions.
- The revolving door among smartphone-veteran CEOs points toward consolidation of leadership talent around fewer, more specialized firms — with boards increasingly willing to swap chiefs mid-pivot rather than wait out a strategy.
The trend: Handset-era executives are cycling through ever-shorter tenures at smaller tech firms as those companies abandon diversification and refocus on their original core technologies.