Blackberry has laid off 250 staff from its Product Testing and R&D offices in Waterloo, Canada. The story was broken today by Canada’s CTV News.
The stricken company laid off 5000 staff last year and with the latest news of yet more redundancies it seems that 2013 is set to follow form, if perhaps not quite so dramatically. However, these latest layoffs may be an even more alarming sign for the Canadian tech company, as they represent losses for the department which is responsible for innovation; exactly what the company will need if its going to dig itself out of its current hole.
Blackberry has come under scrutiny earlier this year with one academic going so far as to recommend the company give up it’s handset manufacturing wing altogether. The firm certainly don’t look like they’re going to be taking this advice on board however, with a new touchscreen flagship handset – the A10 apparently in the works.
The line coming from Blackberry was that these redundancies were part of a plan to make the company more efficient in a statement to Tech Crunch. Spokesperson Linette Kwong said, regarding the redundancies, “This is part of the next stage of our turnaround plan to increase efficiencies and scale our company correctly for new opportunities in mobile computing. We will be as transparent as possible as those plans evolve.”