RIM is about to lay off more employees in an ongoing effort to cut $1 billion by 2013. According to one report, as many as 3,000 RIM staffers could get the boot as soon as next week. However, RIM has not officially confirmed this as of yet.
RIM’s Global Corporate Communications Manager spoke to TechCrunch this afternoon and confirmed there are more layoffs on the horizon. She went on to explain that the company is “moving quickly for the impacted employees.” As RIM communicated earlier, the company plans to eliminate 5,000 positions within the current financial quarter. While RIM hasn’t pointed out affected departments and regions, it seems those working on BlackBerry 10 are safe — well, at least for now.
RIM is seemingly betting it all BlackBerry 10. RIM’s spokesperson indicated today several times that BB10 employees are safe from layoffs. The company already delayed its next-gen mobile platform from later this year to early 2013. The project likely needs all the help it can get.
Prior to cutting 2,000 people in July, RIM employed around 16,000 people worldwide. But now, after concluding this next round of layoffs, RIM will have just around 9,000 — a rather humble amount consider RIM once employed around 20,000 people.
As for IBM buying RIM’s enterprise division, a separate RIM spokesperson indicated that RIM will not comment on rumors and speculation.