Toronto – BlackBerry Ltd has laid off about 250 of its employees at its headquarters in Waterloo, Ontario, as part of its latest move to trim costs, the smartphone maker said on Thursday.
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“This is part of the next stage of our turnaround plan to increase efficiencies and scale our company,” a BlackBerry spokeswoman said.
The company, which last year cut thousands of jobs, recently hinted that more reductions were in the offing.
Last month, BlackBerry reported dismal quarterly results, which triggered a 28 percent plunge in its share price.
Sales of its make-or-break new line of smartphones came in well below some analysts’ expectations. The results offered little evidence that the company could quickly win back market share from Apple Inc’s iPhone as well as Samsung Electronics Co Ltd’s Galaxy devices and other phones powered by Google Inc’s Android operating system.
The company, which had roughly 12,700 full-time employees, as of March 2, said the employees being laid off were part of the new product testing unit, a team that supports its manufacturing, and research and development efforts.
BlackBerry recently said it no longer planned to migrate its new BlackBerry 10 operating system across to its Playbook tablet, as the hardware on that device was not powerful enough to provide a smooth experience for users.
Many take this as a sign that BlackBerry plans to phase out the poorly received device. It sold only 100,000 Playbooks in the last quarter.
In contrast, Apple reported earlier this week that it sold 14.6 million iPad tablets in its last quarter.
Shares of BlackBerry were flat in morning trading.
Wow! Thats like 25 percent of the conpanies active users assuming that most of those 250 people are trashing their Blackberrys (finally tbey can) on their way out the door.
What to do guys!? Sell my stocks
a loss? Or hope for the best? Will they look like palm? Or strive?? Any tips! Suggestions?
Don’t sell. Blackberry is trading at 50% book value. Meaning if they would liquidate their assets plus all their patents you would have around
14 dollars a share. Therefore there is very little down side into holding onto the stock and lots of upside in a situation where there is a turnaround
I have a good friend on Wall Street and he tells me that RIM, the company that manufactures the BlackBerry, is done and will be bankrupt or sold within the next few years. They stuck with their old designs too long and now its too late for them to catch up to iPhone and Android/Galaxy. People no longer think the name “BlackBerry” stands for cutting edge technology, they see it as a joke. Its a textbook case of a company refusing to change with the times. Sony took a bath in the ’70s and ’80s with the Beta format for videotapes, which it stuck to as long as possible while JVC racked up huge sales with the VHS format.