Today BlackBerry has confirmed its most grim news to date, as the company announced it would be laying of 4,500 more employees, which is almost 40 percent of its workforce. After the layoffs the Waterloo company will have 7,000 jobs remaining. In addition BlackBerry reported that it had lost $950 million for its last financial quarter.
BlackBerry had its stock halted so it can deliver this bombshell. They’ve barely gotten by these last two quarters, with revenue hovering around $3 billion. However this upcoming quarterly report will show a dramatic drop in profits, and post losses nearing the billion dollar mark.
Fact is, no matter how hard the company had tried, BlackBerry 10 devices still remained on the shelves. What’s even worse, BlackBerry said that it sold 3.7 million smartphones last quarter, most of which were its older BlackBerry 7 devices.
Furthermore, the company reported revenue for the second fiscal quarter of 2014 was $1.6 billion, instead of the $3.1 billion announced in the first quarter. Half of this money comes from their services, not hardware. The company even took a hit with its cash on hand, as that also dropped from $3.1 billion to $2.6 billion.
Crazy thing is, BlackBerry just announced its new flagship device the Z30 a couple of days ago, so it’ll be interesting to see if the company limits the amount of markets this device will see.
I guess the only glimmer of hope through all this news is, BlackBerry’s markets share with large corporations and small governments remain steady, which shouldn’t be at all surprising.
“Our enterprise business continues to reflect the trust that governments and businesses have placed in the BlackBerry platform,” said BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins in a press release. “Security matters and enterprises know the gold standard in enterprise mobility is BlackBerry.”
Just about every journalists in the free-world has predicted the company’s imminent demise, and that day seems to be approaching soon. It’s clear that BlackBerry needs to ditch the consumer market, if they don’t, they won’t make it to 2014.
[MarketWatch; via RW]