'6,000 RIM jobs at risk' of a pink slip

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion is threatening to axe thousands of its workers, according to reports. The ailing mobe firm shed co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis in January after a slump in sales, and replaced the pair with Thorsten Heins. More recently, head of global sales Patrick Spence departed. According to …

[Jeebus]

Restructuring does not solve the problems of RIM, they are only delaying the inevitable. They're done, everyone has caught up and passed them in their lead areas.

[Anonymous Coward]

The writing was on the wall

A good few years ago.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not all areas - I have yet to type on a keyboard anywhere near as good as the ones RIM makes. And their hardware build quality is just superlative; my 9800 slider has taken egregious punishment and still snicks open and closes like new. Materials are first rate; the feel and textures in the 9800 and PlayBook are great.

Unfortuntely, the old BB software on the 9800 is terrible. The 'key lock' button is on top, very wide and flat, and needs almost no click pressure. And the screen somehow gets triggered by fabric. Result? While walking around with the bb in my pocket, I've written 900 page emails, taken dozens of photos, and alarmingly, got one click away from sending a text message to everyone in my address book... In Arabic.

It also tends to do things like turn on Glympse, and thus the GPS, which I only notice when my pants get very hot and my battery is 90% dead.

That's another area of excellence, by the way - I can go two days of phone, extensive web, and music playing, on one charge.

Unless the phone has turned on the GPS...

The screen's supersensitivity has caused me no end of troubles during calls, too: the mute and hild buttons are huge, and aren't turned off(quickly enough?) when you put the phone to your face. Cue accidentally muting calls I've just made, putting the pizza place on hold a moment before I give them my order, and hanging up on my wife the instant I answer the phone.

I desperately want to love RIM, but their products being terribly flawed is ironically made even worse by their closeness to the excellence they had in 2005 when I got my first 7800.

[JakeyC]

6,000 RIM jobs

That's bound to leave a bad taste in the mouth.

[ivancurtis]

Re: 6,000 RIM jobs

That's why you've got to go for the "pink slip". Much more appetizing.

[Postalj]

Re: 6,000 RIM jobs

The proble is that could lead to all kinds of infections.

Title should be changed to "6000 women at risk of uti following rim job pink slips."

[LinkOfHyrule]

Misleading headline

I thought this was a news story about the Guinness word record for Anilingus and was confused to find it on The Channel - it's really more of a Reg Hardware story if you ask me - but alas its something to do grown up things and not about rude stuff at all!

[Anonymous Coward]

Makes sence in a senceless World

Selling of production factories, sales overheads and generaly dressing up to make there IP able to outshine any overheads in legacy.

Should enable them to use a secure AES chip then as well perhaps.

[Anonymous Coward]

Start at the top

The direction was all wrong. Start from the top - replace the three tiers of staff. Leave the engineers alone for a while, they should be the last to go assuming they were only following orders (built X type of rubbish, build at Y cost by leaving our Z functionality).

Recovery is possible. Teenage girls still love Blackberrys as do Presidents and Prime Ministers...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Start at the top

Re: "Recovery is possible. Teenage girls still love Blackberrys as do Presidents and Prime Ministers..."

The problem is that complacency has allowed the corporate customers that once depended upon RIM to see a future where any smartphone can do the job. When corporate clients ditch their BES servers, RIM has to reduce costs fast (I realise that these decisions affect people, but the car has been heading for the wall for a few years...)

At best, teenage girls are fickle and even Gordon Browns reputation for buying new Nokias only kept that company going until the next election....

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Start at the top

They're basically abandoning their drive into the consumer market and remaining focussed on the business market. They know all too well that trying to produce a sexy attractive product for consumers is hard when you don't have personnel with good taste.

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is the managers now want iShinys, so a blackberry isn't hip enough, and the techies are all using Android.. So who is left to use Blackberrys? the only person I know with one is a teacher...

RIM need to push their services not their hardware, as I am sure many would go for that over using MS Exchange... (Actually I think tech ops would choose carrier Pigeons as an alternative to exchange)

[Don Jefe]

Shocked

When I visited London a few years ago & saw all the kids at the pub with a BB. I was embarassed because at thathat point a BB was just for business.

RIM caved and left the biz sector hanging while they built toys for the consumer market. Worst of all they only halfway did the consumer sector so real consumer hardware outran them & they didn't make any changes on the corp side until it was too late. I guess no one should be surprised at half measures from the Canauks though.

[Mikel]

Minor error in article

6,000 should read 16,000.