Kevin Bostic
Things still aren't looking up for BlackBerry, as the struggling Canadian phone maker revealed Thursday it will lay off 250 more employees as part of a continuing plan to cut costs and rescale its operations.
BlackBerry made the job cuts earlier this week and confirmed the personnel decisions on Thursday in a statement to AllThingsD. The 250 employees worked at a Waterloo, Ontario, product-testing facility, and they are the latest among thousands that BlackBerry (née Research In Motion) has cut over the past few years.
The layoffs were not entirely without warning. BlackBerry confirmed during its annual shareholder meeting that — following a dismal quarter that saw the firm losing $84 million — more layoffs were coming. In the last fiscal year, BlackBerry has let go of more than 5,000 staff.
The shift in the smartphone market brought about by the entry of Apple's iPhone caught BlackBerry unprepared, and the phone maker has been struggling to adjust ever since. In its heyday, BlackBerry shipped upwards of 14 million phones in a quarter, but that number has fallen to just 6.8 million this past quarter, with the majority of those not even running the company's most recent operating system.
BlackBerry's attempts at responding to Apple's rise have failed repeatedly. The company lost half a billion dollars on its poorly-received PlayBook iPad competitor, and the head of the division that released that device is now leaving the company, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The release of BlackBerry 10 and the two flagship devices running the new operating system was meant to bring the company back to some form of relevance. Sales of those units, though, have apparently fizzled, leading to last quarter's disappointing numbers.
BlackBerry officials still cast the layoffs and restructurings as a means of creating a leaner, more efficient company.
“These employees were part of the New Product Testing Facility, a department that supports BlackBerry’s manufacturing and R&D efforts,†spokesman Alex Kinsella said. “This is part of the next stage of our turnaround plan to increase efficiencies and scale our company correctly for new opportunities in mobile computing.â€
Charles Martin
Malcolm Owen
Andrew O'Hara
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31 Comments
BlackBerry officials still cast the layoffs and restructurings as a means of creating a leaner, more efficient company.
Translation: They're bullshitting with buzzword speak about what the real issues are.
BlackBerry was too late to modernize its mobile OS and hardware, and as a result, this has become a two-party race between Android and iOS. At this point, BlackBerry should rethink their strategy to offer software and services for third-party mobile hardware and OSes rather than develop their own. Become a software company, more or less. Or, perhaps offer BlackBerry branded Android phones with BlackBerry software on it. As it currently stands though, BB10 was DOA.
Blackberry at best will survive as a niche player. Most likely it will cease to exist in a couple of years. I am so glad for having left before the boat was going to sink. When iPhone 4 was already out, most people at RIM were still in denial, people were still gloating about antenna gate. Now 3 years have passed, BB10 in many ways is still behind iPhone 1
So they previously fired people in marketing and sales, so their efforts there are less than they were before. Now, they're firing people in testing of new products, so they will lack some of their ability there as well. Yup, this is they way a confident company acts.
So they previously fired people in marketing and sales, so their efforts there are less than they were before. Now, they're firing people in testing of new products, so they will lack some of their ability there as well.
Yup, this is they way a confident company acts.
But it looks great on the bottom line and the CEO will get a fat bonus for improving quarterly profits. Who needs stupid things like new product R&D and testing, anyway?