BlackBerry fires 250 more employees in turnaround effort
By Seth Fiegerman From Mashable
BlackBerry (originally RIM) laid off 250 more employees on Tuesday as part of a continued effort to turnaround the company.
The layoffs, which were first reported by Bloomberg on Thursday, affected employees at BlackBerry’s product testing facility in its hometown of Waterloo, Canada.
“This is part of the next stage of our turnaround plan to increase efficiencies and scale our company correctly for new opportunities in mobile computing,” a rep for the company told Mashable in a statement. “We will be as transparent as possible as those plans evolve.”
The company recently laid off its VP of sales and reports suggested that more layoffs were coming. BlackBerry fired 5,000 employees in the last fiscal year to cut costs.
BlackBerry and its CEO Thorsten Heins have bet the company’s future on its new line of BlackBerry 10 smartphones. However, the company announced disappointing sales of the new devices in its earnings report last month and reported overall revenue well below Wall Street’s estimates, raising concerns about whether its turnaround effort is working.
BlackBerry’s stock was up slightly in midday trading following the news.
Image: Justin Sullivan/Getty
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