BlackBerry Lays Off 250 Employees From Its New Product Testing And R&D Department
Layoffs at Waterloo-based smartphone industry pioneer BlackBerry cut deep last year, with around 5,000 employees being let go. Those cuts continue into 2013 as BlackBerry undergoes what CEO Thorsten Heins called a …
Context & Ripple Effects
The 250 job cuts land on top of a restructuring that has been running since early 2012: RIM began shedding senior staff that March, then prepared what it called radical global restructuring measures that May under CEO Thorsten Heins, followed by roughly 5,000 layoffs over the past year. The story travelled widely the same day — Reuters, CTV, Business Insider and others all picked it up.
What makes this round notable is the target: new product testing and R&D, the function that would have to ship the rumored all-touchscreen A10 flagship expected for the holidays as successor to the Z10. It comes alongside other retreats — the unsupported PlayBook, Heins' stated skepticism about tablets' future, and a confirmed BBM app for iOS with unconfirmed talks to preload the messenger on rival handsets.
First-order effects
- BlackBerry's product testing and R&D capacity shrinks just ahead of the rumored holiday launch of the A10, raising execution risk on the device positioned to follow up the Z10.
- Waterloo-based engineering staff absorb a second consecutive year of reductions under Heins, following the roughly 5,000 employees let go in 2012.
Second-order effects
- With hardware headcount thinning, BlackBerry's strategy leans harder on software reach — the confirmed iOS BBM app and the unconfirmed preloading talks with rival handset makers become more central to revenue than any single device launch.
- Carrier partners and enterprise buyers watching repeated cut cycles get another signal of a company managing decline rather than expansion, pressuring Z10 inventory confidence ahead of the next flagship.
Third-order effects
- A pioneer cutting into its own R&D function suggests the smartphone industry consolidating around players who can sustain both hardware volume and software platforms, squeezing mid-tier OEMs out of self-funded innovation.
- If the pattern holds, BlackBerry's path bends from device maker toward a services-and-messaging company built on BBM and enterprise software, with hardware as a shrinking complement — though whether management commits fully remains an open question.
The trend: BlackBerry's successive layoff rounds under Thorsten Heins mark a legacy smartphone leader attempting to shrink its way from hardware dependence to a software- and messaging-led business.