While many mobile devices makers, such as Apple and Samsung, are seeing record sales and ever-increasing revenues, Canadian firm Research In Motion are in the midst of a pronounced downward slide, which has today seen them announce a management restructuring and large-scale redundancies totalling around 11% of their workforce.
The firm was the first to popularise the smartphone, and its Blackberry handsets, among the first to feature full QWERTY keyboards and on-board email, were a staple of businesspeople the world over until a few years ago. With the advent of the touchscreen smartphone, first Apple’s iPhone and later Google’s Android, interest in the Blackberry line began to wane, and the firm has been unable to reinvigorate its product line, even after releasing a touchscreen model and, most recently, the 7″ Playbook tablet.
Shipment numbers have been dwindling for several quarters in a row, and a recently-published anonymous letter directed at co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie helped cement RIM’s image as a company in disarray.
The slowdown is eerily reminiscent of Nokia’s recent troubles, which have resulted in long-time CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo being ousted, several rounds of lay-offs and restructurings, and the abandoning of MeeGo, the firm’s joint mobile OS venture with Intel, in favour of a big pay-out from Microsoft in return for using their operating system.
RIM intends to notify the 2,000 employees on the chopping block of their impending redundancy this week, which could mean an anxious wait for many in the firm’s Waterloo, Ontario HQ and elsewhere.
