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BlackBerry company lays off 2,000

10 percent of Research in Motion workforce laid off in cost-cutting effort

Research in Motion, the Ontario-based company that makes BlackBerry devices, has announced the impending loss of 2,000 jobs as the next step on a cost-cutting plan.

In addition to removing 10 percent of the workforce, RIM has revised the responsibilities of top management in an effort “to create greater alignment of the organization,” CNN reports. Chief operating officer Don Morrison has retired after an extended medical leave and has been replaced by Thorsten Heins.

In the past, RIM has distinguished itself as a leader in the burgeoning smartphone market, but recently sales have declined as the fast-paced environment speeds up. Many analysts have critiqued RIM’s dual-CEO structure, calling it inefficient, but Jim Balsillie and Mike Laziridis maintain they are up to the job.

According to CNN, unexpectedly low sales of BlackBerry smartphones and tablets led the company to authorize the layoffs, saying the goal was a focus on “eliminating redundancies and reallocating resources to focus on areas that offer the highest growth opportunities.”

One of the RIM’s major problems has been the lack of new products. The Torch, the latest smartphone to come from BlackBerry, is almost a year old, an eternity when competing with Apple and other companies. RIM maintains its new operating system, BlackBerry OS 7, will redeem the company, but BB7 isn’t scheduled for release until late August at the earliest.

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