BlackBerry Lays Off More Employees, Shrinking Smartphone Division - The UpStream

BlackBerry Lays Off More Employees, Shrinking Smartphone Division

posted Sunday May 24, 2015 by Scott Ertz

BlackBerry Lays Off More Employees, Shrinking Smartphone Division

Apparently finally turning a profit was not enough to save employees at struggling BlackBerry. The company announced they would be laying off an unspecified number of employees. It is expected that the majority of those layoffs will come from the devices business, including jobs in hardware, software and applications for the BlackBerry platform.

In the early days of smartphones, before consumers had really ever heard that term, BlackBerry regularly battled Palm to hold the #2 slot behind Microsoft's Windows Mobile platform, which often held strong in the #1 spot. Today, the smartphone landscape looks very different, with Android taking the top spot, and Microsoft and Apple battling for #2 from area to area. In North America, Apple tends to lead, while in Europe it's Microsoft. BlackBerry, however, barely makes the charts.

BlackBerry said in a statement,

As the company moves into its next stage of the turnaround, our intention is to reallocate resources in ways that will best enable us to capitalize on growth opportunities while driving toward sustainable profitability across all facets of our business...

One of our priorities is making our device business profitable. At the same time, we must grow software and licensing revenues. You will see in the coming months a significant ramping up in our customer-facing activities in sales and marketing.

Their software growth has begun to see a resurgence. For example, BlackBerry Messenger, which was always a favorite for businesses because of its security focus, has arrived on other platforms, bringing the brand name back to popularity. The app is actively maintained, with the Windows Phone app receiving an update this month.

In addition, Ford recently announced that their lower-end Ford Sync models would switch to a QNX-based system after Microsoft stopped developing the highly specialized platform to focus on the more universal Windows 10 platform. QNX is a company which was purchased by BlackBerry and was used to transition to BlackBerry 10, the OS that runs the now defunct PlayBook and all modern BlackBerry handsets.

Can this IBM-style focus on software and services work out better for the company, or will they eventually go the way of Palm and become part of a larger company (hopefully with a happier ending)? It is likely that, no matter the outcome, it will come to pass sooner rather than later.

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