BlackBerry Reportedly Prepping To Slash Workforce By 40 Percent 89
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."
Color Me totally unsurprised (Score:3, Insightful)
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 (Score:2, Insightful)
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:Blackberry OS (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Color Me totally unsurprised (Score:2, Insightful)
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".