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BlackBerry: We ARE cutting jobs AGAIN

Biz fomerly known as RIM desperately seeking profits from device unit

Blackberry is to axe workers across its loss-making hardware division to lighten overheads, the ailing Canadian smartphone maker has confirmed.

The company temporarily broke into the black during Q4 of fiscal ’15 ended February, but this short run of fortune couldn’t mask the wider malaise and yet another year of losses.

CEO John Chen wants to achieve sustainable profitability by the end of this fiscal and is starting off with another round of cost cutting - though Blackberry didn’t put a number on redundancies.

“Our intention is 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

“As a result, we have made the decision to consolidate our device, software, hardware and applications business, impacting a number of employees around the world,” said BlackBerry.

The company employed 6,225 full-time staffers globally as of February, way down on the 16,000 workforce in 2012 before it began the cost purge that followed a string of disappointing results.

In BlackBerry’s last full financial year it turned over $3.34bn, down 51 per cent year-on-year and reported a loss of $304m, albeit better than than the loss of $5.9bn in fiscal ’14.

The company reiterated that it sees a future built on wares and services rather than just boxes:

“One of our priorities is making our device business profitable. At the same time, we must grow software and licensing revenues. You will see in the coming months a significant ramping in our customers facing activities in sales and marketing.”

The “path to growth” will be found via investments in software, enterprise security and Internet of Things, it claimed.

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