BlackBerry Ltd is preparing to make deep cut to its workforce by the end of the year that could lead to the company slashing its headcount by up to 40 percent, the Wall Street Journal said on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter.
The layoffs will be across the board and likely occur in waves, the newspaper reported.
BlackBerry, which once dominated the corporate smartphone arena, last month said it was considering an outright sale of the company as it reviews its options.
It has struggled in recent years to stanch rapid market share losses to rivals such as Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd.
BlackBerry, which has already laid off hundreds of employees this year and previously warned that further job cuts were in the offing, declined to comment on the report or the magnitude of the reported layoffs. The company employed 12,700 people as of March.
“We will not comment on rumors and speculation,” BlackBerry spokesman Adam Emery said. “We are in the second phase of our transformation plan. Organizational moves will continue to occur to ensure we have the right people in the right roles to drive new opportunities.”
The report comes the same day the Canadian company introduced the Z30, a top-of-the-line smartphone intended to help the former industry pioneer wrestle its way back into the intensely competitive smartphone market, but investors have grown increasingly nervous about Blackberry’s future as its market position crumbles.
The company has seen lackluster sales of devices that run on the BlackBerry 10 operating system.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained