After Blackberry's reportedly almost $1 billion second quarter loss, the pioneering mobile phone company has announced that it will lay off 4,500 employees, Yahoo! Finance reported Saturday.
The surprising early release of earnings results showed that Blackberry has nearly $1 billion second quarter loss, leading the company to cut off its global workforce by 40% or laying off approximately 4,500 employees worldwide.
Reports stated that the company's stock dropped 19 percent to $8.50 after trading has been reopened.
USA Today reported that this is perhaps due to the fact that the Canadian company's latest products were not up to par in terms of key features with its big competitors, Apple and Android-based companies. Although Blackberry's z10 initially propelled shares of up to 40% in the first three months of 2013, it wasn't enough to sustain the company.
Blackberry is expected to release its earnings next week, but as early as Friday afternoon, the company has already announced that it is expecting a major loss of about $950 million to $995 million for the quarter, including a massive inventory charge because of the increasing market competition, according to Yahoo! Finance.
Previous reports have already hinted that the Canadian company's new smartphone and tablet were unlikely enough to give Blackberry a boost or even just turn around its momentum.
Blackberry pioneered in 1999, and it was the dominant smartphone maker for on-the-go business people as well as general customers for a long time until Apply launched its iPhone in 2007. Since then, the company has been facing a crammed market competition with the iPhone as well as Android-based rivals such as Samsung, LG, and HTC.
USA Today reported that the miscalculations of the company in keeping up with the demands of consumers in general is obviously a common thing nowadays, granting that Nokia and Motorola had sold a fraction of their worth to Microsoft and Google, respectively.
Analysts maintained earlier that although Blackberry was already boasting early this year that its consumers were given access to 100,000 apps that ran on its operating system, the figure just wasn't enough since it is only a small fraction compared to the software applications available in Apple's App Store and Android's Play Store.
"The reason consumers buy the devices now is for what they can do with the hundreds of thousands of apps that are written for them, which means much of their use is for pleasure, not business," USA Today reported.
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