In August Last Year, Blackberry CEO John Chen announced that Blackberry had completed its restructuring and was working towards returning to profitability. However, the company is set to lay-off an unspecified number of employees in what it referred to as consolidation of its devices business. The employees worked in the software, hardware and applications of its smartphones that include the Blackberry Passport, Classic, Slider and Z10.
In a recently released report by IDC, Blackberry’s smartphone market share shrunk below 1% to stand at 0.4% which has forced the company to narrow its target for consumers to power professionals (pro-consumers) in the financial professionals, government workers and medical field. The company is reallocating resources to capitalize on growth opportunities and achieve profitability across all its business segments.
BlackBerry said it plans to boost sales and marketing activity in the coming months, as well as secure strategic partnerships with other businesses and hire more employees focused both on sales and high growth areas of its business. Last week, we wrote a long piece on where Blackberry may have lost its way as well as potential areas for growth of its business. Revenues by the former smartphone giant are on a steep decline but still managed to eke a profit. John Chen has worked towards consolidation of its business in software offering and security offerings with acquisitions such as Watchdox and Secumart.
