
BlackBerry to cut up to 40 percent of employees - cpeterso
http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/09/report-blackberry-to-cut-up-to-40-percent-of-employees/
======
stephengillie
RIM used to make it all - the best expensive mobile hardware, low-price decent
mobile hardware, the fastest messaging server, a free but slower alternative,
the most secure encryption, good mobile OS, the best mobile-to-mobile
messaging service, and a solid network.

What happened?

Apple came in with better expensive hardware and a better OS

Google came in with a better (free) OS

Many other companies came out with better low-price hardware

The fastest messaging server (BES) became free for some reason... (couldn't
compete with free* Activesync?)

Social networks and other messaging platforms overtook the free email
alternative (BIS) and mobile-to-mobile messaging (BBM)

The most secure encryption fell by the wayside -- it was so secure that it was
a liability, as some governments refused to let BES operate in their country
because they couldn't spy through it.

The network was another liability, as people had a $10/mo higher phone bill to
use a Blackberry than any other smartphone.

\---

Blackberry still have the fast network, secure encryption, and a number of
other assets, but as yet have failed combine those assets into any sort of
compelling product.

~~~
pavs
All your points can be boiled down to a single point:

They didn't take competition seriously until it was too late. Same can be said
about Nokia and probably in the not too distant future it will be Microsoft.

~~~
dcurtis
This is absolutely not true about Nokia.

Nokia took the competition seriously, but made a single fatal error: it tried
to evolve its low end platform into its high end platform. While that strategy
makes complete sense in 90% of cases for market innovation, in the mobile
phone industry--which, it turns out, was going through _revolution_ \--Nokia
should have done the opposite. People often forget that Nokia still controls
more than 70% of the worldwide phone market, and controlled vastly more of it
in the mid-2000's. In 2007, they had no idea that 90% of industry profits
would come from the 30% of the market that they were not focusing on.

You can't really fault them for that, because strategically it makes perfect
sense. They regarded the competition seriously but had a flawed
approach/response.

That being said, they had a bunch of half-assed hedges against their fatal
strategy, like high-ish end platforms such as Maemo, Symbian's advanced
versions, etc.., but in fast moving markets with extraordinarily complicated
infrastructure/platforms, this approach does not work. You can half-ass
evolution, but you have to full-ass revolution.

They realized this mistake fairly early on, but by then it was too late to
develop a platform, and full-assing it would have put the company's core
competencies at huge risk. So Kallasvuo was fired, Elop was hired, the company
moved in with Microsoft, and, eventually, they married.

~~~
pavs
I disagree, nokia didn't consider iphone a threat until it was too late. They
said it themselves:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/why-nokia-wasnt-able-to-
fight...](http://www.businessinsider.com/why-nokia-wasnt-able-to-fight-back-
against-the-iphone-2012-7)

------
lowglow
I'd like to invite any BlackBerry engineers over to IRC channel #Techendo on
Freenode. We're working on something and would love if you want to make some
change in the world. :)

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auctiontheory
BlackBerry still rules in some markets. The BlackBerry Babes would not approve
of these layoffs:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lDJGHCX2wA](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lDJGHCX2wA)

~~~
stephengillie
The Objectification Police would not approve of the Blackberry Babes. And
people wonder why these industries have a gender imbalance...

~~~
hnriot
you think women don't objectify just as much as men do?

If you do, then you are very naive. Yet you don't hear men whining about about
a gender imbalance because women get up to just as much objectification. There
are other reasons why there's an imbalance, if you look at other factors,
ethnicity, for example, you'll find the same imbalance, and for the same
reasons.

~~~
stephengillie
You're simply incorrect in every point you made.

------
HorizonXP
BlackBerry really sucks at marketing this, but BlackBerry 10 is a _brand new
product_. Whatever you may remember about old legacy BlackBerry, throw it out.
This is a new OS built upon QNX, new hardware, and a new company.

That said, this sucks for those involved, but it's all a part of the company's
reinvention.

~~~
stephengillie
Which means that developers are forced to learn something new to continue. Now
they choose -- they can learn QNX and develop for Blackberrys, with their
meager userbase.

Or they can learn Java and develop for Androids and their very large userbase.

Or they can learn Objective-C and develop for iOS and their deep-pocketed
userbase.

Edit: or learn...C# && .net?.. and develop for Windows Phone, which _just_
went through the same situation, and their "loyal" userbase of mostly MS
employees.

The choice seems obvious in hindsight, and was obvious to some people
beforehand too.

~~~
flogic
If Microsoft wants to play seriously in mobile they need to stick to their
roots. By that I mean leverage their superior position in the PC space down
through tablets and then into phones. If they can make it so people want to
port Windows applications to the tablet space and use them there, they'll come
out pretty good.

~~~
stephengillie
While this sounds good in powerpoint, it doesn't work out so well in
practice...especially when they had a beloved platform in WinMo and dumped it
for Windows Phone.

And what about leveraging their superior position in the console market? Why
not try to move into gaming tablets, then gaming phones?

~~~
skyebook
beloved? A number of people I knew, including myself, were going for the
Windows mobile 5 and 6 phones in that 2005-2007 period (those years may be
slightly askew, but generally before everyone had an iPhone or Android
device). The device specs were good, the phones had all the features, I bought
Missing Sync to make it work well with my Mac; It all should've been smooth
sailing.

But it just didn't work well. Email would quite often need to be reconfigured,
it was awful at renegotiating connections and hopping from tower to tower,
that one update (from Samsung or MS) that wouldn't turn off GPS correctly when
you left the application that was using it, killing your battery in a few
hours.. The list droned on.

Taken on their own it wasn't the end of the world but put together it felt
like that frankenstein PC you have running in the basement that you didn't
have a power switch lying around for and turn on by touching a screwdriver to
the motherboard.

Maybe it was ahead of its time, maybe the OEM's just weren't paying enough
attention, maybe Microsoft was trying to hard by including a start button and
awful stylus. All I know is that damn near everyone I encountered with one of
those phones was seeing people with Blackberries working as advertised and
becoming very jealous. Add iPhone/Android in a few years and MS couldn't just
leave it out there. They'd have been better off completely killing mobile than
leaving Windows Mobile to compete with operating systems _meant to be used on
phones_

------
xarball
Does anybody find it odd that the only reputable shred of journalistic
integrity that the wall street journal vomited into this _entire_ article was
in a FOOTNOTE about how blackberry's Z30 was just released today, of all days!

Since when has 'people familiar with the matter' become a reputable source for
such an inane accusation? Now the entire internet is repeating this like a
bunch of parrots yet nobody seems to stop and ask for facts?

I wouldn't be surprised if Dow Jones is happy. Let's stop and consider who
owns the Wall Street Journal for a moment. Because I think their pagerank just
went through the roof:

[http://money.cnn.com/data/markets/dow/](http://money.cnn.com/data/markets/dow/)

I'm not sure what to say about this.

------
caval
This is a good thing for Blackberry. The previous CEO's were too laid back,
and this laid back attitude trickled down the ladder. A lot of long time
employees still have this attitude, and are being let go to allow for new,
ambitious people to be hired. Or so I've heard.

------
zainny
I think maybe only two or so years ago BlackBerry had over 17,000 employees so
in total we're talking about more than half of the company being cut in the
space of a few years.

Huge when you think about it like that.

~~~
n00j
Yup, in 2011 they has around 19,000 employees when they had their first major
layoff. Kind of sad to see a once iconic Canadian company go downhill so fast
these past couple year.

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chollida1
I can't find any word on if this concentrated in either the software or
hardware groups or if its across the board.

If its the former it seems like BBRY is trying to make a go of it as an
independent company, if its the later then it looks like they are making
themselves look pretty in an effort to sell themselves.

------
kinkora
The verge has a good write up on what happen to BB (rise and fall) if anyone
is interested.

[http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/21/2789676/rim-blackberry-
mik...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/21/2789676/rim-blackberry-mike-
lazaridis-jim-balsillie-lost-empire)

------
grumps
Layoffs are never fun...and neither is life at a company leading up to those
layoffs. Best of luck to them.

Overall I really like the blackberry platform it was great for messaging. Its
to bad they weren't able to stay on top of the market but this is what
happens.

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n1ghtmare_
Too bad for all the people that worked hard to deliver BB's products. I wish
them best of luck, hopefully they'll find something better.

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gkwelding
I read that as "BlackBerry to cut up 40 percent of employees", I'm not sure
which headline would be worse....

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adventured
This sure sounds like the official end of Blackberry as a stand-alone company.
To stay in the game on margins, apps, and consumer awareness they needed
massive scale. Clearly those days are over.

I think it's safe to assume an acquisition (of Blackberry) isn't far behind.

------
bsullivan01
I have a feeling that this number will be revisited within 6 month of the
first round. In this business, when it pours, the fact that they are
reorganizing will cost them sales as everyone wants to be on the winner
platform.

their stock chart over the years:
[http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=BBRY+Interactive#symbol=b...](http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=BBRY+Interactive#symbol=bbry;range=my;compare=;indicator=volume;charttype=area;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=off;source=undefined;)

------
JVIDEL
Another case of socialization of incompetence: instead of blaming the subpar
decision-makers who drove BB to the ground those who did the best they could
to put this platform back in the game get a pink slip.

