BlackBerry to lay off workers across the globe

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IANS | 27 May, 2015
In a bid to make its business more profitable, BlackBerry is mulling to lay off a chunk of its workforce in its devices unit.

The Canada-based company said in a recent statement that it has decided to consolidate its device software, hardware and applications business, impacting a number of employees around the world, PCWorld.com reported.

The company said as it moves into the next stage of its turnaround, it aims to reallocate resources in ways that will "best enable us to capitalise on growth opportunities while driving toward sustainable profitability across all facets of our business".

The company had more than 6,000 full-time employees as of February 28 this year.

BlackBerry launched in the fiscal year four new BlackBerry 10 smartphones, including the Classic, Passport, Z3 and the Porsche Design P'9983, but the share of the BlackBerry OS has been on the decline, and was 0.3 percent of the market in the first quarter of this year, according to research firm IDC.

The company is trying to expand in new businesses beyond devices, such as enterprise markets and security.

It launched, for example, BES12, a cross-platform enterprise mobility management technology, and announced a partnership with Samsung Electronics to integrate BES12 with Galaxy smartphones and tablets that are embedded with Samsung's Knox security technology.

It also unveiled the BlackBerry IoT Platform, initially targeting the automotive and asset tracking industries, in a bid to get a share of the market for small wirelessly-connected devices.