Thomas Nielsen has stepped down after just eight months as CEO of RealNetworks, the Seattle-based company best known for its RealPlayer multimedia-streaming software.
Rob Glaser, the company’s founder and chairman, has returned to the CEO job to fill in on an interim basis, RealNetworks said.
Nielsen is not leaving to take a position elsewhere, the company said in a statement Tuesday.
RealNetworks has struggled financially in recent months. The company reported a net loss of US$17 million in the first quarter of 2012, following a loss for the full year in 2011. In January, it sold $120 million in video software and patents to chip maker Intel.
“I come back to RealNetworks with a sense of great urgency to set the company on a long-term path to success,” Glaser said in the statement.
Glaser founded RealNetworks in 1994. Prior to that he had been vice president of multimedia and consumer systems at Microsoft.
Cameron Scott covers search, web services and privacy for The IDG News Service. Follow Cameron on Twitter at CScott_IDG.