back to article BlackBerry's Heins readies the hatchet yet again

BlackBerry plans to make significant staffing cuts by the end of the year, sources claim, which will see the Canadian firm shed as much as 40 per cent of its total workforce. As many as 5,080 of BlackBerry's approximately 12,700 employees could get the axe under the plan, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, citing …

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  1. Don Jefe
    Pint

    Oh, oh, oh! I know what to do!

    Instead of firing more of the people who just follow orders, how about firing some of the people that keep giving the orders to stay stuck in 2005?

    I mean, maybe I'm way off base. I've never been in charge of a global leader in mobile communications and sat by debating the merits of an intentionally dysfunctional leadership structure instead of developing new products. So I wouldn't really know.

    1. Flip

      Because...

      ...they'll just move on to destroy other Canadian tech firms like Nortel. No wait...

  2. Arachnoid

    Im sure MS

    Would be interested in the extra security Blackberry uses

    1. Don Jefe
      Happy

      Re: Im sure MS

      Why? The NSA cracked it too. It isn't even a possibility anymore, it has been done. Once anything is done, it can, and will, be done again.

      MS can just keep their current 'security' and save a bunch of money :)

      1. Levente Szileszky

        Re: Im sure MS

        As of today the NSA didn't crack BES, stop spreading BS pulled out of your bottom part.

        Neither can crack AES256 - it's just not feasible, not even with purpose-built HW; it's a lot cheaper to go around it, compromising endpoints or side-channeling etc.

  3. Jess

    Thrown out the baby with the bathwater.

    I think they have seriously shot themselves in the foot by removing BIS.

    BIS gives very cheap, (but limited - no streaming) internet access. That is the main reason I keep my BB. (The keyboard and text input is also very good).

    The other showstopper (for me) is being poor with memory. My device (9700) was awful with the later OS, and when it came back from repair with the earlier one, I left it on.

    I'm not going to go for a system that won't run on a 512 MB device, for starters I had intended to get a playbook to try it, but they have totally lost me as a customer for a new device now.

    1. Don Jefe
      Happy

      Re: Thrown out the baby with the bathwater.

      They drowned the baby in an ever rising tide of obsolescence a long time ago. I had been using a Blackberry since they were monochrome and I had to be dragged away kicking and screaming a year ago. But I'm glad my IT guys convinced me. For individual users or small companies any of the other smartphones out there are superior to what Blackberry has to offer.

      Blackberry still has some superiority in Entrrprise scale device management and complex messaging; but that really applies to a very small set of buyers. Just pick a new phone and go with it. You'll like it fine, once you get used to the soft keyboard anyway :)

      1. Levente Szileszky

        Re: Thrown out the baby with the bathwater.

        Actually as someone always hated any BB OS-based crap I have to say they were correct *then*; they are totally wrong *now*, as BB10 is a very capable and smooth mobile OS. The issue is the mgmt and its lackluster commitment to it - my guess is TH and his ilks have their eyes on their walkaway package, reportedly in $40-50M range, in case of a successful sale of the company which means balanced books come before any spending on a risky marketing/dev push.

        1. Redsyrup

          Re: Thrown out the baby with the bathwater.

          Very sad and probably right.

        2. Jess

          Re: Thrown out the baby with the bathwater.

          Perhaps I should rephrase; memory requirement, rather than management for the new OS.

          I would have bought a playbook and tried it. However they dropped the plan to give it the OS.

    2. Redsyrup

      Re: Thrown out the baby with the bathwater.

      BB 10 is the only smart phone to my knowledge that fully supports Java and Flash. Crucial for older web apps. It's an impressive fact that most laymen gloss over.

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