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."
Is this a repeat? (Score:1)
It seems like they're slashing their workforce every few months. How many people are left?
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I thought they got rid of the twin-ceo's awhile ago...
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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
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Thanks for the insight. Unfortunately, that's exactly what I have observed working for many big companies in my life: people join, after a while they drink the local kool-aid and then stop being critical.
I usually never criticize my company outside of the company itself. But within the company towards my superiors or peers, I'm quite critical of what we do and how we do it - provided I have an idea of how we could do it better.
I have experienced, many times, that at certain point group-thinking starts becom
Re: Is this a repeat? (Score:2)
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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.
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Maybe Samsung will wait until they can buyout on the cheap. Get some of the device designs and patents. Although whatever Samsung would do with it would likely be based on Android, but carry over the keypad and Blackberry look-and-feel.
It's not about the phone, it is about the secure email system. A lot of large conservative companies still can't break free of them because of the difficulty in controlling large numbers of android/IOS phones.
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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
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To be fair, the Novell comparison doesn't exactly match up... Novell at least (to their credit) diversified a little, and went all-in to Linux (albeit too late).
Blackberry has done none of this, and (to extend the poker analogy) merely doubled-down on their own increasingly lousy hand.
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To be fair, the Novell comparison doesn't exactly match up... Novell at least (to their credit) diversified a little, and went all-in to Linux (albeit too late).
Blackberry has done none of this, and (to extend the poker analogy) merely doubled-down on their own increasingly lousy hand.
Same misinformed song different singer.
BlackBerry bought The Astonishing Tribe [www.tat.se] (They designed the UI for the G1) to redesign the BlackBerry UI.
They also bought QNX [qnx.com] to be the base for the new BB OS 10.
In fact they were quite aggressive in acquiring [wikipedia.org] properties to bolster their brand.
On top of that they have diversified the BES [blackberry.com] (BlackBerry Enterprise Services) to secure iOS and Android devices.
The problem BlackBerry has is mind share and they haven't got it anymore. The new ecosystem is actually quit
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BlackBerry bought The Astonishing Tribe [www.tat.se] (They designed the UI for the G1) to redesign the BlackBerry UI.
They also bought QNX [qnx.com] to be the base for the new BB OS 10.
In fact they were quite aggressive in acquiring [wikipedia.org] properties to bolster their brand.
All of those acquisitions do nothing (as in, bupkis) outside of the mobile device realm that Blackberry occupies. Nothing.
Find me something that can be used outside of that realm, and I'll be happy to concede.
Novell's acquisitions gave it reach into selling OSes (SuSE), email (GroupWise), and stuff well outside of their original directory/auth stuff. Hell, they even own UNIX (as in, SysV).
On top of that they have diversified the BES [blackberry.com] (BlackBerry Enterprise Services) to secure iOS and Android devices.
Sure - way the hell after Microsoft beat them to it with ActiveSync, and by the time they even bothered, BlackBerry had
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Novell's problem was less about licensing than the fact that Netware was a "feature phone" OS that did file sharing very well and general applications very poorly. This was fine until the rise of the internet when people needed a general application platform for servers, and NT did that AND file sharing.
Novell's NDS is STILL a superior directory service, but AD was good enough and with the ability to run server apps, directory services and file sharing over IP networks, NT was a pretty easy choice.
Had Nove
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I'm surprised they haven't just put the company up for sale and crossed their fingers someone would foolishly put in an offer.
They did. Nobody wants to buy. Everyone is waiting for their evaluation to tank even further before putting in an offer for their patent portfolio (which is about the only thing of value they have left). Their next quarterly report, which is coming up soon, is going to be horrid and that will drive down their value. Someone might jump then but, more likely, everyone will wait until the second report which shows all the signs of also being terrible which will further drive down the purchase price before maki
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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 appr
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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).
I think the problem is that most of those big companies also moved to eliminate phones entirely for anybody but execs, and everybody else had to bring-their-own. Well, how many employees are going to go spend their OWN money to buy a blackberry? Now IT is under pressure by local managers who have no power to buy phones but want their workforce to still be connected, and thus the enterprise features just weren't as high a priority.
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Re: Color Me totally unsurprised (Score:2)
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Perhaps Microsoft will buy them. Judging from their past investments, they seem more than willing to pony up big $$$ for formerly important cell phone manufacturers that are quickly losing market share.
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Prospective buyers are likely waiting for a large shrink in expenses, such as payroll.
Samsung and Apple don't need all those employees that make phones that nobody buys. They already have employees that make phones people DO buy.
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Amateur hour is over, bitches!!
-RIM
Too bad (Score:2)
RIM JOBS FALL BY 40% (Score:5, Funny)
Film at 11.
I reduced my home workforce to 0 (Score:2)
Remaining 60% (Score:5, Funny)
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. (Score:2, Interesting)
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 y
Re:There's a lesson in here for every tech company (Score:4, Interesting)
"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).
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You are right on. Tech is about innovation, not litigation.
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.
P.S. Nice "moral". If I had mod points, I would be scoring you as 'funny'.
Too bad - Q10 is a great phone (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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As an owner of a Q10 (though I use my S3 almost always), I agree. The phone is great. I just dislike the OS (compared to Android), and I hate that there's no apps (yes I'm sideloading, but I don't consider those "apps").
Blackberry OS (Score:3, Informative)
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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 (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.
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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.
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Windows Phone? Really?
If you took the market share of Windows Phone, and added the market share for BlackBerry, it still wouldn't be 1/5 of Apple's market share in the same measurement period, which is still less than Android in the same period.
Yeah, Windows Phone is Android's "only actual competition."
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I can't really agree. I've developed for BBOS pre 10, and it was a *nightmare*. BBOS10 is a bit better, but it's not great. While nothing really compares to VS and .NET (IMO), Eclipse isn't that bad to do Android development, and I had no issues with the SDK or API. The tablet emulator, however, is so slow on Windows that it's impossible to use.
As for the UI, I actually think Google has done a really nice job (now, in JB) on it. They enforce a lot of standards, and in general it looks "better" (YMMV) than i
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multitasking sucks
You've got to be kidding me. BlackBerry has been doing true multitasking longer than any other major mobile OS. BB's multitasking puts iOS to shame (which has basically no multitasking) and is only rivaled by Android's multitasking which came out *after* BB.
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I agree that BB does multitasking significantly better than the competition. I disagree that it is rivaled by Android's approach to multitasking. I don't think it even comes close.
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"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!"
Right, and the "me too" argument has been around just as long. The difference is that Android is still growing marketshare and Samsung has proven what a joke the "me too" argument is by differentiating to the point of becoming the largest cellphone manufacturer ar
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Samsung has proven what a joke the "me too" argument is
Tell that to HTC, Motorola, LG, ...
But worse, that argument looks even more stupid due to the fact that Blackberry's latest OS is very much a "me too" clone of Android
Wow, not even a little bit. The two are dramatically different in just about every respect.
The decline in value and worth of Nokia is almost unparalleled to any other tech company.
Ignoring the "unparalleled" hyperbole, for the moment, do you honestly think they'd have done better had Elop gone with Android? Nokia had made a lot of strategic mistakes long before Microsoft came calling. Do you think Elop's infamous restructuring was "just because"? It was, at the time, a necessary effort to save the ailing company.
To suggest that had they just switched to An
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"Tell that to HTC, Motorola, LG, ..."
But they're not differentiating on hardware like Samsung did and that's exactly the point.
That's like saying Windows Phone 8 didn't differentiate because it's doing shit. Obviously it's very fucking different to Android and very much differentiates but differentiating to the extreme isn't a guarantee of success either. Samsung get it just right by providing quality hardware that people want. That's all the differentiation you need and it's a thing Nokia and Blackberry co
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Differentiating via OS doesn't work, that's not opinion
Tell that to Apple...
This simply tells me you haven't even seen either Blackberry's latest OS or Android since version 4.
My first BB was a 7290, my current phone is a Z10. (While I'm a long-time user, I'm no die-hard, I'll happily give up my BB if something better comes along.) My wife and a few of my friends are Android fans and I've done some Android development. I'd like to think that I have a reasonable, if admittedly limited, familiarity with Android.
Blackberry have even gone as far to copy common icons such as the 3 dots for menus and so forth. Many other UI elements are exact copies of Android.
You're not very familiar with BlackBerry are you? From their gesture suite to their approach to multitasking, BB10 is about as close to Android as And
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Blackberry could come back as a semi successful phone manufacturer if they adopted an open platform for their hardware (i.e. Android)
the android market has fierce competition with many players. there's no way they could jump in now and compete with the likes of samsung, asus, motorola, acer, HTC, sony, LG, and all of the chinese knockoffs. it's a game of razor thin profit margins. BB is (was) better off trying to do something different (for the same reason, i thought nokia's decision to go WP was a good idea. of course hindsight is 20/20).
that, and there was a day when an enterprise phone would have sold, but no longer. everyone is BYOD,
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for the same reason, i thought nokia's decision to go WP was a good idea. of course hindsight is 20/20).
Depends what you mean by "Nokia." The smartphone division has a better chance of surviving in some form than Blackberry does; the sales may be similar in number to Blackberry's but the sales growth especially for the cheaper models like the 520 is healthy and positive.
So long as Microsoft don't follow their usual form and crush the new acquisition through mismanagement or plain stupidity.
Blackberry won't disappear completely (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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BYOD is a nice idea, but even from an employee's perspective, it doesn't make much sense.
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.
I get that the company may take a peek at my computer screen at work, or MITM my gChats or quick "Do you want to meet for lunch?" emails I send out on company time on company machines, but I don't want them downloading the entirety of my private mail account, backin
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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 big
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You have no idea how MDM works on Android and iOS. Stop posting about this subject until you educate yourself.
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Wow you guys really won't give up the KoolAid. There were hundreds of you spouting the same nonsense years ago, and there are much fewer of you now.
Your "Secure" phones are going to mean fuck-all when BB goes belly up in a few months and is sold. Why? Because you won't be able to get any more of them. You wont get support on the shitpile that is BES. Your "Secure" phone infrastructure will be so secure that nobody is going to get anything done with it.
Security is a process. It's not a phone, or a phone make
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This isn't like typewriter repair, where as long as there's one guy in the country who can still do it, you can get your typewriter fixed. There needs to be enough companies willing to pay for BB products and services to keep the company afloat. You might have noticed a sharp downward trend in BB's cash flow in recent years. For every company that thinks they "can't live without" BlackBerry, there are a literally a hundred others saying "yeah, we'll make do without." And that number of "we'll make do"s goes
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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 a
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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.
So, as long as major companies aren't run by short-sighted cost-cutters Blackberry will do just fine?
Good luck with that business plan. My Fortune-500 employer went to BYOD ages ago, and it isn't likely to change that policy anytime soon. I think a few employees still have Blackberries, somewhere. Many employees simply don't check their emails unless they're at their desk, since they choose not to buy devices supported by the BYOD policy.
Re:Is it me? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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And this pattern is the problem...
You raise the question of whether something on the "new platform" is done the same way as on the "old platform"
You then assert that this is the case, enabling a whole rant about how this is horrible, and therefore the company that made these products shall be destroyed in the most gruesome way possible.
At no point in this are you actually showing evidence of actually knowing how the "new platform" does anything. Rather, you're jumping to whatever conclusions enable maximum
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Nortel, Sun, Word Perfect, Digital, etc (Score:2)
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No feedback loop (Score:2)
Over time, I also discovered that calendar items were being automatically deleted as they aged - this, without any warning or prior information. Looking up past business meetings which had disappeared was pretty frightening.
The
Buildings? (Score:2)