BlackBerry axing staff worldwide in bid to make devices unit profitable

Firm says it is consolidating its device software, hardware and apps business but declines to say how many employees would be let go

Ailing smartphone maker BlackBerry is axing staff across the world in a bid to make its devices department profitable again.

In a statement sent to Bloomberg, Lisette Kwong, a spokeswoman for the company declined to state how many of the Canadian firm's 7,000 employees would be affected.

"We have made the decision to consolidate our device software, hardware and applications business, impacting a number of employees around the world," BlackBerry said in the statement.

City Index Group CIO Mike Lear told Computing in November that BlackBerry's global market share had gone from 15 per cent to about 0.8 per cent in two years. And Computing has heard from many enterprises that have dropped BlackBerry as their main corporate device and switched to offering alternatives from Apple and Samsung, or have deployed bring-your-own-device (BYOD) programmes.

BlackBerry has recently focused on selling its devices to professionals in finance or government, with the claim that they can offer a more rigorous level of security than other smartphone providers.

Last year, BlackBerry CEO John Chen said that the worst was behind the Canadian smartphone firm, and that he was concentrating on returning the firm to profitability, even if it meant focusing on producing fewer devices. While revenue is still declining, the firm has posted profits since late last year.

While BlackBerry has focused less on hardware than previously, new models are still being released, with the two most recent being the BlackBerry Classic smartphone and the Leap, a low-cost five-inch all-touch smartphone. Three more devices are scheduled to be released this year.

However, the company is seemingly more interested in the software area, and in February appointed a new chief security officer to improve its offerings in the areas of mobile device management (MDM) and Internet of Things-related security.