Posted on 09/18/2013 12:32:39 PM PDT by rickmichaels
BlackBerry Ltd. is planning major staff reductions before the year is out, according to a published report citing unnamed sources.
The Waterloo, Ont.-based smartphone maker has an employee base of about 12,700 while the cuts would come from across the company’s entire operations, a report in the Wall Street Journal published Wednesday said.
“Organizational moves will continue to occur to ensure we have the right people in the right roles to drive new opportunities in mobile computing,” a BlackBerry spokesman told the newspaper.
The cuts—if true—would be the deepest and most extensive in the company’s history, eclipsing the 5,000 jobs shed last year as the technology giant saw an acceleration of market share declines against rival mammoths Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co.
The Canadian company—which once dominated the global market for Web-connected phones capable of email messaging and browsing—swung to a loss of $646 million in the latest quarter while revenue slipped by 40 per cent to $11 billion.
The launch of a revamped handset lineup using the company’s redesigned BB10 software has slowed rather than arrest or reverse BlackBerry’s sales decline.
Also Wednesday, the firm made a surprise announcement to launch a new Z30 handset model, a larger and more robust device than either the Z10 or Q10 models BlackBerry unveiled earlier this year.
I predicted Blackberry’s demise three years ago.
It is not a surprise.
The sad part is that there are not many technologies that BB owns worth buying. So, even the vultures will stay away.
A year ago when I got a new company phone, my IT department strongly encouraged me to NOT get a Blackberry...as it required them to operate a server for Blackberries to sync with Outlook.
Then I went to the AT&T store. I wanted to at least look at the Blackberries, but two different salesmen talked them down, essentially saying they were trash.
I knew right then that Blackberry was toast. The very salesmen allegedly selling their devices were badmouthing them.
My smartphone is incredible, and it does a lot of things...but it doesn’t sync my calendar reliably, and the software isn’t nearly as stable as my Blackberry’s was. Oh well.
This stuff happens to everything Obama chooses.
The fork has been ready for over a year
I got rid of my Bold and got a Q10. Keyboard still beats any touch screen keyboard out there. They screwed up in a couple of subtle ways to me and I still see no fix. You cannot email to groups/mailing lists in your private address book. It has to be a group on the Exchange server (all of this assumes you are using Balance and work email). This would kill me except I have control over the Exchange server so I can create a group, use it on my Q10 and then hide it from everyone else, so I fake it out. There are a couple of other things I like on the old models better but it is the only game in town with a true QWERTY keyboard, good security, and still excellent synchronization with your calendar and email and contacts.
From your post and a lot of people do not know this, you do not need the BES server anymore. It works and gives the IT department some better control and management of devices but the Q10 and Z10 will use ActiveSync just like an Windows Phone, Android (better than Android implementations), and iPhones do to connect to Exchange. So if your IT department supports any of those other phones you can get a Blackberry and connect by setting it up just like an iphone.
Apps are still lacking if you are into having a lot of those. As a matter of fact that is my next biggest complaint - I used Rove Mobile Admin to save me a lot of time. It will not work on the 10 models. I use their web interface so I can still do a lot of administration from my smartphone but not quiet as easily. Also have not found a good ssh client either. Have not looked lately but losing google maps was a pain also, they may have a release for the new OS by now.
What’s your smart phone? I have a Windows 8 and love it. It naturally syncs well with Outlook, lync, oneNote, Excel MSWord, etc.
It is rather amazing.
I owned three or four BBs. All worked well (except for the one wife dropped in the lake.)
Now using an iPhone. Getting used to typing on glass. Otherwise, OK.
I’ve got a Samsung Galaxy.
Funny thing, all the teenyboppers in the AT&T store noticed my skepticism of losing my Blackberry, and kept pushing me towards the Windows phone. Apparently they are easier for ancient people like me to use...and ancient is 43 y/o!
My first problem was setting up the permissions, etc., to get it to sync with our Outlook server. It took me around 2 hours of typing passwords and codes to finally get it right.
But there are other problems...I used to be able to read a message on my BB, but it would still show as unread on my desktop - I like that feature. Can’t set it up that way now.
More annoying - the ‘precedence’ for the email and calendar cannot be segregated from each other...so if I want to give my desktop precedence, I have a problem with my calendar - if I set an appointment in my Smartphone, it does NOT show up on my desktop...so if I’m at a meeting and set an appointment for the next meeting, it does me no good to enter into my phone, and I have to remember when I get back to the office.
Another annoyance - if I were to look at Friday’s schedule on my phone, no meetings would show up. I have to go to a menu and ‘sync’ the calendar to get my appointments to show up. This has tricked me before.
Often times I like to copy and past text. This was much easier on a Blackberry, hands down.
One final complaint - the phone is less than a year old, but its screwing up...the touchscreen keyboard doesn’t always come up when it should...and as far as I can tell, there is no button I can press to make it come up when I want to. So I’ve got to hit the back button and try again, to see if the magic keyboard will come up. This of course was never an issue with a Blackberry.
Still, I understand that my smartphone does hundreds of things my old BB wouldn’t...just the little things that annoy me.
That is a Google Droid, right?
I had a droid for a couple of years and had a tough time with email and disk space.
If you get a chance, look at a Windows 8 or 8.1 phone. It wants to work with Outlook in the best way.
Yep its an Android operating system...and I’m locked in for another year on my contract...and frankly I’m gonna hold onto it for as long as I can, to avoid buying yet another phone. I just have to live with the problems.
You may well be right, but I'm seriously thinking of going with their new Z10 instead of sticking with Apple. It's a great phone -- hope it can pull them out of their self-dug hole.
My smartphone is incredible, and it does a lot of things...but it doesn’t sync my calendar reliably, and the software isn’t nearly as stable as my Blackberry’s was. Oh well.
Obama will not be happy to learn there’s no more RIM jobs.
Goodbye Blackberry Way....
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