Blackberry is cutting up to 40 percent of its workforce as it re-invents itself in the mobile computing world according to The Wall Street Journal.
A Blackberry spokesman told The Journal the changes will help the company explore options in mobile computing.
"Organizational moves will continue to occur to ensure we have the right people in the right roles to drive new opportunities in mobile computing," the spokesman said.
The several thousand employees affected will be let go in waves throughout all departments The Journal reported. The eliminations come as the company, which once dominated the smartphone world, has had to decrease its operations to become better-suited for a world that Apple and Samsung have taken over.
As of March, Blackberry had 12,700 employees, which was the last time it revealed a total number. Two years ago, over 17,000 employees worked at the company based in Waterloo, Ontorio Canada. Blackberry also had control of 14 percent of the smartphone business. This has since dropped to less than three percent.
Before their recent announcement, Blackberry made a smaller amount of cuts over the summer from its sales, and research, and development departments. This comes just a year after the company let go 5,000 people. Blackberry created a special board committee to investigate an alternative other than eliminating positions such as selling the company The Journal reported.
This could conclude as early as November according to people with knowledge of the situation The Journal reported.
Last year, Blackberry lost $646 million when its revenue significantly decreased 4o percent to $11 billion. This year, the company lost four million subscribers and suffered another decrease of $84 million in the fiscal quarter that ended June 1.
Blackberry is expecting to suffer another loss when it reveals its earnings next week The Journal reported. The number of subscribers it has will not be reported, and remain confidential however.
