RIM Cuts 5,000 Jobs, Delays Next Version of BlackBerry
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It's not looking good for BlackBerry-maker RIM. The company has just reported its first quarter results, which saw a significant drop, and has announced that it will be delaying the next versions of its phones.
According to the official release from the company, it brought in $2.8 billion in revenue during the first quarter of the 2012 fiscal year, down 33 percent from $4.2 billion in the previous quarter.
Sales of BlackBerry handhelds were at an all time low of 7.8 million units. And even though the company cut the price of its Playbook tablet, it only sold 260,000 of them. RIM has lost significant smartphone market share to Apple and Android device makers over the last few years.
To that end, RIM announced that it will be cutting 5,000 employees, which should amount to over $1 billion in cost savings.
RIM said it continues to fight, but while it still plans to release its next version of its BlackBerry software - BlackBerry 10 - it also announced that it is putting off the release. BlackBerry 10 was due out this fall; the company now says it will not be out until the first quarter of 2013.
"Over the past several weeks, RIM's software development teams have made major progress in the development of key features for the BlackBerry 10 platform; however, the integration of these features and the associated large volume of code into the platform has proven to be more time consuming than anticipated," RIM said in a statement.
In January, RIM announced that its longtime co-CEOs, Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, were stepping down. Thorsten Heins took over as the CEO of the struggling Canadian company.
"Our first quarter results reflect the market challenges I have outlined since my appointment as CEO at the end of January," Heins said in a statement today. "I am not satisfied with these results and continue to work aggressively with all areas of the organization and the Board to implement meaningful changes to address the challenges."