BlackBerry BBM boss gone as company looks to strengthen enterprise business
BGR has learned from multiple sources that Executive Vice President Andrew Bocking is no longer with the company. What is unconfirmed, however, is whether Bocking was fired or decided to leave on his own accord.
Context & Ripple Effects
Andrew Bocking's exit is the latest entry in a two-year leadership drain at BlackBerry: a 2012 Reuters report described the former RIM boss seeking a strategy shift before he quit, July 2013 brought the departure of the PlayBook tablet chief alongside 250 R&D layoffs, and November 2013 saw the company oust its COO and CMO while replacing the CFO.
What distinguishes this one is what it removes rather than adds: Bocking ran BBM, BlackBerry's most visible consumer-facing asset, and BGR's reporting pairs his exit with a stated push to strengthen the enterprise business — reading the consumer-versus-enterprise tension directly into the org chart. The story travelled unusually wide on pickup day, landing at Gigaom, CNET, The Register, TechCrunch, Re/code, Pocket-lint, CrackBerry and PhoneArena.
First-order effects
- BlackBerry's BBM unit loses its top executive with no named successor reported, and BGR leaves open whether he was fired or resigned — an unresolved question that keeps attention on internal discord rather than strategy.
- The company is now publicly framing its priorities around the enterprise business, the segment where Bocking's consumer-messaging mandate sat lowest.
Second-order effects
- BBM's cross-platform expansion — its main bid for relevance outside BlackBerry hardware — loses its internal sponsor, weakening the consumer arm against rivals like WhatsApp in the messaging race.
- Enterprise-focused rivals and partners read the reshuffle as confirmation that BlackBerry's services revenue, not messaging users, is where management sees its future, sharpening competitive positioning around MDM and secure communications.
Third-order effects
- If the churn pattern holds, BlackBerry consolidates into an enterprise-software company that retains consumer products only as legacy attachments, with each executive exit repricing how much the market values those assets.
- Sustained turnover at the top of a device maker's consumer divisions points toward a broader industry sorting, where handset-era brands split their identity between enterprise services and abandoned consumer franchises.
The trend: BlackBerry's revolving executive door is tracking its strategic migration from consumer devices and messaging toward an enterprise-services core.