BlackBerry to Fire 4,500 Employees, Feeling the Heat from iPhone & Android Phones

BlackBerry Cutting 4,500 Jobs

BlackBerry To Fire 4,500 of its Staff

After renaming itself from Research in Motion (RIM) to BlackBerry and launching two new models new Z10 and Q10 phone this year, BlackBerry is now feeling the heat of low selling of BB smartphones. BlackBerry has announced that they are going to fire around 4,500 employees. If this year firing is added to the last years, around 9,500 employees were sacked in 2012 and 2013. The new losses will reduce Blackberry's 12,700-plus global workforce by about 40%. The company said that it will cut operating cost by 50% by the end of the first quarter of 2015.

Since the beginning, BlackBerry was the favorite of corporate customers and government employees in the US and around the world. They once used to have around 14% of the US smartphones share but now they have less than 3% market share. They are ranking 4th after Windows Phone. The launch of Android based smartphones and iPhone are the main reason for the loss of their share.

BlackBerry May Go For Sale

BlackBerry had a net operating loss of $995 million in Q2 this year and it shares have performed very badly and are closed down 17%. BlackBerry also announced that they have setup a special committee which is looking up as on option to sell the BB business. BlackBerry is also dropping its smartphones lineup from six models to four models.

BlackBerry is now banking on its enterprise mobility solutions. To do so, they are moving away from normal customers to focus more on enterprise customers.