BlackBerry 10 delayed; RIM plans 5,000 job cuts

Those waiting for the first phone with BlackBerry 10 that was to arrive later this year, will now face disappointment. The Canada-based company have reportedly pushed back the launch to early next year, even as it sees falling sales numbers. As if that wasn't bad enough, reports coming also suggest that Research in Motion would be slashing 5,000 jobs, i.e. 30 percent of its workforce, too.The picture of the future for the company continues to pale, as the delay would mean missing out on both the crucial back-to-school and Christmas shopping periods - a time when its competitors will continue to bring out more phones. According to reports, "Shares of the company, which also announced a steeper-than-expected quarterly operating loss and deep job cuts on Thursday, plunged 14 percent after it said it would release its revamped BlackBerry 10 devices early in 2013. It conceded the development had "proven to be more time-consuming than anticipated.""

BlackBerry 10 delayed..

The report quotes analyst Matthew Thornton of Avian Securities in Boston as saying, "It's like watching a puppy die. It's terrible," while Edward Snyder, managing director of Charter Equity Research in San Francisco stated, "Wow, what a disaster. From a numbers point of view, it could hardly be worse, and it's going to deteriorate from here." He was further quoted as saying RIM is now in "a handset death spiral." The fact that the company is facing such a huge loss for the first time in eight years, coupled with "likelihood that sales keep sliding into 2013," according to the report "severely reduce the options for the company if it is to survive." It has been also reported that the company now expects the job cuts to cost $350 million in the current fiscal year, and it is also looking at cutting $1 billion from its operating costs in the year. "RIM now considers that $1 billion target as a minimum it will pursue, given the additional BlackBerry 10 delay. It said it had already cut layers of management, streamlined its supply chain and outsourced repair work," the report added further. 

Only recently was the company's P’9981 luxury smartphone launched in India at a rather steep price of Rs. 1.39 lakh. The price that is being asked for the P’9981 is quite a lot. The phone is likely to be a hit only amongst those looking to make a fashion statement. The company also had to cut down prices of their PlayBook tablet and they even stopped selling the 16GB model. The company has, according to the report stated that it expected to put in yet another operating loss in the current quarter, 'as it is shipping lesser smartphones. In the last quarter, the company said that they reportedly shipped 7.8 million BlackBerry smartphones, which was only about half of the more than 14 million of two quarters ago. "Until now, it had shipped more than 10 million devices every quarter since late in 2009," the report pointed out.

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