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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."
Film at 11.
This space for rent.
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.
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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.
"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).
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.
Required reading for internet skeptics
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.
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.