It’s yet another sad day in a long stretch of sad days for BlackBerry. The once-reigning Canadian company has announced that it’s retiring a third of its consumer handsets in a bid to focus on its enterprise and so-called ‘prosumer’ businesses instead. Despite the much-anticipated release of its BlackBerry 10 Z10 smartphone earlier this year, BlackBerry lost $1 billion last quarter and will accordingly leave 4,500 employees laid off in its wake. Yikes.
The decision was "difficult, but necessary," said embattled BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins. "Going forward, we plan to refocus our offering on our end-to-end solution of hardware, software and services for enterprises and the productive, professional end user."
On a more positive note, the company has finally begun rolling out its flagship BBM app to iPhone and Android devices. It took a few years longer than we would have liked but, hey, better late than never.
[via The Verge]
