More layoffs loom as BlackBerry struggles for relevancy
It's been a tough past couple of years for BlackBerry, and for many of its employees, things might be about to get worse. Citing "people familiar with the matter," The Wall Street Journal says the Canadian handset maker is getting ready to reduce its workforce by up to 40 percent. BlackBerry currently has around 12,700 employees spread across various divisions, and none of them are safe from the chopping block.
"Organizational moves will continue to occur to ensure we have the right people in the right roles to drive new opportunities in mobile computing," a BlackBerry spokesman told WSJ.
The cuts will affect all departments and are to occur in waves between now and the end of the year. These are on top of smaller rounds of layoffs earlier this year that mostly affected BlackBerry's sales and R&D departments, which themselves were on top of 5,000 job cuts last year.
Just two years ago, BlackBerry was home to over 17,000 employees. At the time, BlackBerry owned a 14 percent share of the smartphone market, but the company's been unable to hold its ground amid rising competition from Samsung and continued competition from Apple. Even Microsoft's Windows Phone platform recently surpassed BlackBerry in market share, according to data from IDC.
What's worse for BlackBerry is that it's running out of moves. The company already tried a name change, a new operating system, and new devices.
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