BlackBerry Reportedly Prepping To Slash Workforce By 40 Percent

Nerval's Lobster writes "BlackBerry is preparing to slice up to 40 percent of its workforce by the end of 2013, according to anonymous sources speaking to The Wall Street Journal. The layoffs will reportedly shrink the company's overall operations and affect every department. A BlackBerry spokesperson refused to comment on the matter to the Journal. BlackBerry bet the company on the success of its new BlackBerry 10 operating system, but its first two 'hero' devices running the software — the Z10 and Q10 — failed to make much of an impact when they arrived on the market earlier this year. On Sept. 18, BlackBerry also unveiled the larger Z30, which runs an updated version of BlackBerry 10 and features a five-inch AMOLED touchscreen and larger battery. Once a dominant player in the mobile-device space, BlackBerry seemed helpless to respond as Google Android and Apple iOS slowly but surely chewed away its market-share over several quarters. As corporations adopted BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) policies, a flood of personal iPhones and Android devices helped displace BlackBerry as a mainstay of executives and office workers."

Comments

Color Me totally unsurprised

[BulletMagnet]

RIM (or Blackberry as they're known by now) rested on its laurels for far too long and let Android and iOS take over. I'm surprised they haven't just put the company up for sale and crossed their fingers someone would foolishly put in an offer.

Re:Color Me totally unsurprised

[larwe]

Actually, they kinda have put the company up for sale. http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/12/blackberry-says-its-looking-for-a-buyer-or-a-willing-partner-forms-special-committee-to-explore-strategic-alternatives/ (Some other article on this topic quoted BB as saying they are "willing to entertain the idea of acquisition", and the author commented snarkily that this is meant in the same way that his three-year-old daughter is "willing to entertain the idea of being given a pony").

Re:Color Me totally unsurprised

[Anonymous Coward]

I see a number of parallels with Novell over the network server OS wars in the early 1990s. Novell had the business, and MS was a joke with WfW 3.11. However, things changed, and even though Novell moved to a better directory server approach, Windows NT's system of domains were muscling Novell out because one just needed to buy the OS and CALs, not the OS, the NOS, then the client licenses, as well as third party client software.

I see similar with RIM over the past few years. They used to completely own the enterprise market and BES was a must have. They didn't play catch up as Windows Mobile, iOS, and Android advanced and started playing ball in the big leagues. The fact that BES isn't needed with iOS or Android, helped clinch the deal.

Both companies owned their respective markets, but didn't adapt to changing demands, customer requirests, and overhead. Both Novell and RIM required additional backend items, compared to just running the OS as a file server, and Exchange as a mail server without needing third party add-ons.

The fact that India forced RIM to say "uncle" and allow communications to be monitored didn't help RIM's image either.

Re:Color Me totally unsurprised

[Anonymous Coward]

RIM, like many companies before them and certainly after them as well, at least subconciously felt they no longer had to innovate to stay successful. They felt like they had a lock on the corporate market and that what they were providing was exactly what the corporate environment wanted and needed.

They failed to realize that personal devices would have as big a role in driving the enterprise as they did. Employees started carrying two phones, their personal device and a Blackberry that was corporate approved. RIM had many opportunities to see the writing on the wall and change course, but it seems at meeting after meeting they were making excuses as to why they didn't need to worry about the future.

Up until recently I worked at a global company that still held a strict blackberrry only policy (expect for upper execs who could push to have their iPhones). Listening to the IT leadership argue why and that RIM would be around forever I am sure was the same sort of discussions RIM had internally. "We are more secure", "We are cheaper", "We provide exactly what business needs, without all the flash of an iPhone to distract", "We aren't going anywhere, enterprises won't all up and leave us".

Too bad

[houbou]

I used to love my BlackBerry.. I bet they would have wished to have been bought by Microsoft instead.

RIM JOBS FALL BY 40%

[bellers]

Film at 11.

Re:Is this a repeat?

[Samantha Wright]

After this? Three. They're kicking out the two other remaining people.

Remaining 60%

[sl4shd0rk]

Will be seated at a table for 6 at Chilis, sucking up margaritas while lamenting how badly the BB CEOs screwed up their awesome market position by not even being able to beat Microsoft to market with a smartphone.

There's a lesson in here for every tech company.

[sehlat]

RIM ended up known as "lawsuits in motion" for their dependence on the government-granted monopolies we call intellectual "property." They depended on these things instead of innovating and improving their products and staying ahead of the pack. Meanwhile, iPhones and Androids kept showing up with new features, better processors, improved OSes, etc. etc.

The moral is simple, run like hell, don't look back because something might be gaining on you, and above all, don't stop to hire mercenaries to fight for you and then relax while a bunch of hired guns save your village with Elmer Bernstein's music in the background.

Too bad - Q10 is a great phone

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope BlackBerry manage to salvage their device business. The Q10 is the best phone I had since the N900. The multitasking is very similar, as is the integrated messaging. And the keyboard is superb. Of course, I wish it ran linux, but apart from that, it's great.

Re:There's a lesson in here for every tech company

[Anonymous Coward]

"RIM ended up known as "lawsuits in motion" for their dependence on the government-granted monopolies we call intellectual 'property.'"

This line is marked by such great stupidity that I felt compelled to reply. Blackberry was entirely hosed by a classic patent troll, NTP. You say they depended on IP rather than innovated, but can you point out how they specifically utilized IP more so than the supposed innovators. Last time I checked, Apple and Google also have patents, and happily enforce them around the world. "Please, help yourself to a fuckin' [] book, cause you're talking like a fuckin' retard." (Southpark).

Blackberry OS

[Terry Pearson]

Blackberry could come back as a semi successful phone manufacturer if they adopted an open platform for their hardware (i.e. Android) and build premium business apps that would be included with their phones. There simply is not enough room for another OS when so many have IOS and Android.

Re:Blackberry OS

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a particularly retarded comment.

The BB10 phones *ALREADY* run Android apps. As long as some significant effort is spent to catch the Android runtime up to the latest stable variant, the app issue will be resolved. Here the BB10 OS would act as a type of hypervisor, that other OS's including Android and iOS struggling to get workable.

A fully functional Android VM inside a highly secure and performant OS (be it BB10 or something else), is pretty compelling.

Re:Blackberry OS

[narcc]

That argument's been around for years. It hasn't improved with age. Becoming a me-too player in a crowded market while simultaneously cutting off the few remaining advantages you have over the competition does not sound like a recipe for success!

Less obvious, but still important, Android kinda sucks. The development tools suck, multitasking sucks, the UI is a mess, etc. The only reason that it's the dominant player is that it's cheap and far more open than other offerings.

It was pretty obvious that Android will win in the short term -- but it will fall, and fall quickly, to any OS that's at least as open and cheap with better dev tools and UI.

Re:Blackberry OS

[notanalien_justgreen]

I make no statement about which OS is the best, but to say Android's main competitor is the Windows Phone is just silly. Hate Apple as much as you like, but Android is Apple's main competitor - Windows and BB are distant also-rans at the point. Hopefully that changes as competition is good for us.

Re:Is this a repeat?

[Anubis IV]

I actually have a younger friend that joined them straight out of college. Quite a few of us felt that the writing was already on the wall in 2009 when he was considering them, so we tried to dissuade him from accepting their offer, but he did it anyway and then just settled in. Again and again, we tried to encourage him to leave or explore other options since he was a talented kid who could have gone to any number of places, but he kept insisting they had some cool stuff in the pipeline. We later found out he was working on the BB Torch, which was way behind its competition by the time it was released, but it's easy to comprehend why someone in his shoes might lose a sense of perspective and think it was the next big thing.

I lost direct contact with him a few years back, but a few of my other friends keep contact with him still, and at least as of a few months ago, he was still there, apparently still insisting that everything was fine. If so, that's a corporate culture that has some real issues, since the ship is already mostly underwater at this point.

Blackberry won't disappear completely

[VoiceOfSanity]

At the company I work for, we've tested iPhones, Androids and other smartphone variations, but stay on the Blackberry for now. The main reason? Security. No smartphone can touch the level of security that a Blackberry possesses, especially for companies in which the security of data is essential. The iPhone initially was allowed, but when folks found out that they were locked down and that they had to use only the software the company mandated for security reasons, the iPhones were returned and Blackberry devices issued instead.

Part of the complaints came because users can't understand that these are COMPANY devices, not personal devices. And the company has a stake in maintaining the security of the device and the data that resides on it. But people wanted to download whatever apps they wanted, a major security threat, or access whatever network they wanted (again, a security threat).

BYOD may be nice for small companies, but not major ones. Especially if the major companies want to stay major companies, device security and data security will remain essential... which is why Blackberry devices will still be around for a while.

Personally? I have a work-provided Blackberry. My personal device is a cellphone, and will remain so as long as it can.

Re:Blackberry won't disappear completely

[farble1670]

Do you really want IT reading / archiving all non-work related emails and texts on your phone? No, you don't. Even if they're the most benign messages ever.

you watch too many movies. that's not possible on any modern OS without getting in and modifying the OS itself. you can't, by installing an application, gain unmitigated access to arbitrary resources on the device. i'm not saying it's not theoretically possible with some incredibly sophisticated software exploiting some yet undiscovered earth-shattering bugs in the OS, but if your company has that sort of resources that they can bring to bear against you, and they have a *reason* to do so, then you have bigger problems.

Re:Blackberry won't disappear completely

[dj245]

Part of the complaints came because users can't understand that these are COMPANY devices, not personal devices. And the company has a stake in maintaining the security of the device and the data that resides on it. But people wanted to download whatever apps they wanted, a major security threat, or access whatever network they wanted (again, a security threat). BYOD may be nice for small companies, but not major ones. Especially if the major companies want to stay major companies, device security and data security will remain essential... which is why Blackberry devices will still be around for a while.

Statements like these seem oblivious to the reasons WHY you issue someone a Company phone. You give someone a company phone because 1. You want to be able to reach them at all times or 2. You want them to be working at all times. In either case, you want them to be in possession of the phone at nearly all times. There has always been a carrot involved to make sure that happens. The employee can use the phone for personal reasons. If I can't derive some personal utility from carrying the company phone around, it is going to stay at home more often than not. Locking down the phone completely removes the carrot- I can't even have Facebook on my company phone so I leave it behind more often than not.

Blackberry's predicted collapse is spurring a lot of big companies to pursue other options. My company is a very conservative company of about 120,000 people and they are experimenting with BYOD in the USA. It has already been rolled out 100% in Europe since the market there is easier for BYOD to implement (every phone uses the same frequencies and every phone has a SIM card). If a popular phone such as the IPhone or the Galaxy started coming with 2 SIM slots (such phones do exist already) then the program would probably be implemented fully. Wiping the user's data off the phone is the only real hiccup right now.

Blackberry is basically cooked unless they have something really good they can roll out in the next quarter. Based on their past performance of "this product is revolutionary!!" and then unveiling a dud, betting on them is a fool's game.

Re:Is it me?

[Octorian]

There is a lot of hate for BlackBerry in the media, the tech blogger world, and the financial analyst world. While not all of it may be unfounded, most of it is quite excessive. If some piece of news has even a sliver of negativity, and is about BlackBerry, it will be spun as the worst thing ever for which the company should be condemned to the pits of hell. If the same news were about any other company, it might be little more than a shrugged off footnote.

Another thing you notice among a lot of this hate, is complete ignorance of BlackBerry 10 and everything the company has done over the course of the past two years. What far too many people simply do not mentally acknowledge, is that BlackBerry 10 is a completely and fundamentally different platform from the old BlackBerry OS. On a technical level, the only thing it has in common is the brand name. You often see people remembering a bad experience with some old BlackBerry OS phone, and using that to draw an invalid conclusion about what the company is currently producing.