Blackberry layoffs

1. Marketing News Exclusives July 18, 2013
BlackBerry Announces Layoffs
By Molly Soat | Staff Writer
msoat@ama.org
In the wake of lower-than-expected performance of its newest smartphone, the all-touch-screen
Z10, Waterloo, Ontario-based BlackBerry is shaking up its executive ranks.
Announced by BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins in a prepared statement at its annual
shareholders meeting on July 9, the staff changes include layoffs across middle management in
sales and support divisions. Additionally, two longtime board members, John Wetmore and John
Richardson, won’t seek re-election. The company made 5,000 layoffs last fiscal year.
Two top BlackBerry executives also were laid off in recent weeks, according to reports by The
Wall Street Journal: T.A. McCann, a vice president in charge of developing and maintaining the
Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn applications for BlackBerry devices; and Marc Gingras, who was
responsible for creating one of the more well-received features of BlackBerry’s most recent
operating system, “Hub,” which manages messages from multiple applications. Last month,
Richard Piasentin, head of U.S. sales, was let go.
According to Gartner, BlackBerry’s share of the global smartphone market has fallen from over
50% in 2009 to less than 3% today. When shareholders asked about the disappointing sales of
the Z10 since its release in March at the investors meeting last week, Heins blamed the
“opportunistic thinking” of U.S. mobile phone carriers in their marketing of top-selling
smartphones from Apple and Samsung. BlackBerry did not respond to requests for comment.
For more Marketing News coverage on BlackBerry, check out “RIM’s Next Move” here:
http://bit.ly/1bFzgKT