Struggling tech giant sacks 200 employees, to abandon new BlackBerry 10 OS for Android

folarin okunola

February 8, 2016 1:59 PM

This comes a month after CEO John Chen insisted that the company's BlackBerry 10 OS is "far from dead"

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According to media reports, BlackBerry has just parted with "approximately 200 employees" total in both Canada and the United States.

GSM Arena reports that the company hasn't disclosed which branches of its operations the cuts are focused on, but earlier reports suggest the BlackBerry 10 and Devices departments.

This comes a month after CEO John Chen insisted that the company's BlackBerry 10 OS is "far from dead", a statement which was needed to clear the air following the announcement that BlackBerry will be switching entirely to Android for future smartphones.

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Since continuing support for existing devices certainly means that the OS is "far from dead", the lack of future BB10 devices means there will have to be cuts in the workforce.

According to the GSM Arena report, the layoffs are part of the struggling company's turnaround plan, which seems to be on the right track, considering the last financial reports from December last year.

With only $15 million in the red, the company's loss was 4.5 times less than analysts had predicted, and the new flagship Priv smartphone seems to be doing nothing but good for BlackBerry.

folarin okunola