“Patrick Spence, who quit this week as Research In Motion Ltd.’s global sales chief, was not the first senior executive to leave the struggling BlackBerry maker this spring and he will not be the last, as the company prepares for thousands of additional layoffs,” Iain Marlow reports for The Globe and Mail Update.
“A number of senior managers have departed RIM since the January management shakeup that installed Thorsten Heins as its new chief executive officer, sources say – and what has been a steady trickle is about to speed up dramatically,” Marlow reports. “RIM, according to several people close to the company, is preparing for a major global restructuring beginning in the next couple of weeks that will see it eliminate at least 2,000 jobs across its worldwide operations. One person familiar with the company’s plans said the layoffs may cut even deeper than that. RIM has about 16,500 employees worldwide.”
Marlow reports, “RIM, which has stopped providing earnings guidance amid the recent competitive turmoil, now needs to slim down as it struggles to mount a comeback against rivals with huge resources. ‘They’ve been axing people on the sly for months,” one former RIM executive said. “Lots of guys are being packaged out right now.’ The next round is layoffs is said to be planned for around June 1 – a day before RIM’s first quarter ends on June 2 – but some expect the announcement even earlier.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: That’s some playbook you’ve got there, RIM.
Related articles:
Beleaguered RIM’s head of global sales departs BlackBerry maker – May 23, 2012
Beleaguered RIM misses badly on revenue, EPS, unit shipments; Former half-CEO Balsillie resigns; CTO, COO also out – March 29, 2012
Another senior executive exits beleaguered Research In Motion – October 28, 2011
Two more senior staff exit beleaguered BlackBerry maker RIM – September 29, 2011
No…we don’t need to “read more in the full article.”
…and this is a surprise, how?
Awful.
A company that arrogantly declares that “Amateur hour is over”, turns 2,000 professionals into unpaid amateurs.
I hope these workers quickly find employment/self-employment in creative, innovative environments.
Go to the original article, and read the comments. Delusional RIM fanbois are hilarious – it’s all the fault of the media, stock speculators, RIM haters…
I also note, reading through the article’s comments, that RIM suffers from The Spirit Of The Age problem of abusing their customers. I want to have sympathy for RIM and have not been bashing on them. I keep hoping they’ll restructure into actual competitors with Apple. But once a sick work culture settles in, i.e. customer abuse, it’s a long hard road to revitalization. Once your customers start cheering for your company’s demise, I don’t hold much hope for its future. So long RIM.
My prediction holds: RIM will be for sale or broken up by the end of 2012. I sort of expect them to make one more go at the Christmas sales season. But that would only dig them deeper in debt.
I don’t see how they can turn it around given the challenges and competition. So if not, sad to see a former market leader loose it’s way while the world moves on …
Behind the scenes, you know the external advisors are already in motion on plans for sale &/or shutdown options.
When your top sales manager departs, on top of the prior departures, it is over.
Won’t make it to Christmas.
Yeah, and here’s the thing: the employees aren’t idiots. They can see what’s coming. So what happens is that anyone capable of finding a job elsewhere bolts. The company is drained of all creativity and talent and all that’s left are the dregs — the about-to-retire, and those too incompetant to find work easily.
A death spiral like RIM is in right now feeds on itself and is damned near impossible to pull out of.
——RM
Very astute observation.
The Blackberry is finished. If you don’t have the software, the App store, the best hardware, how can you compete?
I see Blackberries being used by people who picked them up in low-price deals, mostly non-business users.
@Billy the Fish
I see Blackberries being used by people who picked them up in low-price deals, mostly non-business users.
Yes, governements, military organisations, that sort of thing.. Jeez! you guys really do beleive that it is all about the bells and whistles, dont you?
Indeed, amateur hour is quite over. Fuckem.
How is it acceptable for Apple to keep shitting out the same crappy iPhone 4S year after year, 16 months late to the table, and for RIM it’s a death spiral?
You are amazing . . . and NOT in a good way. Your schizophrenic postings on this site–pro Apple one day, anti the next–make one wonder if you have a sufficient supply of meds to get you through the week. Do run–not walk–to your nearest pharmacist and renew your scripts post haste, OK?
Totally unacceptable! I say we burn them to the ground!
I guess that this is proof that all you need to do to sell a new car is change the shape of the taillights or headlight trim to excite new buyers. This pitiful post above knocks Apple for drastically improving the internal works and the software but not the well designed shape? How often does anyone ‘need’ to change phones? I personally change only every two product cycles.
Changing the internals is the easy stuff. You just insert the latest available chip. No one cares except extreme fanboys such as you. The external shape was not changed, yet it took Apple 16 months to redesign the internals with trivial changes like repositioning the antenna, and upgrading the SOC chip. Every other phone manufacturer worth its salt would have achieved that in less time.
You must be either stupid or idiotic or both or just fucked up not to recognize that Apple has to keep pace with current technological changes to stay with the front runners, not some old fart renewal cycle based on a hack like you.
If it is sooo easy to change the internals and you know all about changing the externals, why haven’t you produced the next great Android phone? Have you ever produced anything other than your posts on this site?
Why is always about taking shots at Android,RIM or MS? RIM have some issues and that is part parcel of most companies life cycle including Apple who were just bout to blow up in 1998 and deferred paying dividends from 1995 to 2012. Times are good with Apple and that is just fine but who knows for long.. Nobody knows. RIM will be fine and no they will never be an Apple or Android but they have a niche with 75+ subscribers and that is not a bad business. They will cut some fat and heck maybe they will sell to Samsung but in the end they have to adjust to the times.
Not going to… has already done. I have a friend in Portland who worked for RIM. He was laid off last week. According to him, since RIM won’t have anything to sell until BB 10 is released at the end of the year they’re axing a large chunk of the sales and marketing folks.
Hard to see how RIM can survive in its present form. The prior business model of providing secure email is no longer working. Meanwhile, the world moved on and RIM waited too long to join the crowd. Now it is trying desperately to play catch-up. This is a deadly difficult game. Revenue is falling so you have less to invest in new products while the competitors keep advancing their designs. They either need to somehow leap frog the competition and find a new kind of mobile business (highly unlikely) or sell themselves off.
2,000 is an estimate on the generous side. The same day as the Globe and Mail suggested 2,000, sources at Reuters had heard (and then published) the figure would be closer to 6,000. Either way, innovation is something that ain’t happening here in town (yeah, I live about 5 minutes drive from Waterloo’s Columbia and Phillip RIM campus).
Several friends of mine have worked for RIM over the years. I considered going to work there as a writer, documenting SDKs but the thing that prevented me from doing so, and what kept coming up in my discussions with friends and associates was that RIM appeared to be a very difficult place to work; toxic is the description that kept coming up. It reminded me a lot of Nortel where I did work in the late 1980s; that too was a very toxic and nasty place to work.
I had two BlackBerries before getting an iPhone. I liked them as they were reliable if a bit sparse in their offerings but with the iPhone, iPad, and my MBP, I found tools that really worked well to support what I wanted to do rather than being tools that I had to accommodate, adjust to, and settle for. As a consumer, I have choices. When did RIM lose sight of this, that consumers vote with their hard-earned dollars?
I can feel some pity for the rank and file working at RIM but If I, with all my limitations, can see these faults at RIM then surely each of the employees can do the same. If RIM has to die, so be it.
Changing the internals is the easy stuff. You just insert the latest available chip. No one cares except extreme fanboys such as you. The external shape was not changed, yet it took Apple 16 months to redesign the internals with trivial changes like repositioning the antenna, and upgrading the SOC chip. Every other phone manufacturer worth its salt would have achieved that in less time.
Apple can’t change things as quickly as other companies for several reasons. Firstly, they actually have a reputation to maintain. They can’t just churn out yet another one of hundreds of phone models, and if it craters or bombs, just churn out a new one. So they’ve got to do 10x as much testing before changing their production line as anyone else. Secondly, because of the sheer number of the one model that they produce, they can’t afford a stuff up. If they had to recall an ill conceived fix, it would cost billions. So again they have to test any changes 10x as much as anyone else.
Also, the idea that changing the internals is “the easy bit” is ridiculous. Thousands of companies have the technology to copy the iPhones externals. Only a handful have the ability to copy the internals.