[Blackberry_Boss]

BlackBerry lays off 90 employees, shuts down Ottawa Product Development Centre - BlackBerry Empire

So wait a second, who's designing BlackBerry 10 then?

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[nelsonpml]

Foxxcon?

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[Blackberry_Boss]

Nooo Foxconn isn't designing the OS. Maybe the low and mid range handsets.

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[diegonei]

BlackBerry will still design the flagship phones. But ONLY those. That's probably one or two phones per year.

Do they really need a facility for "that many" devices? Foxxcon can deal with the "a device for every fancy" approach.

[Blackberry_Boss]

I wonder if they got rid of the whole TAT Team. They need to stop holding them back and let them go wild. Hopefully the 10.3 visually will make ios and android fan boys jelly.

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[jordandrews90]

TAT is now BlackBerry Sweden, and is still located in Sweden, Gary Klassen is running it.

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[jordandrews90]

And the creators of TAT have all already left anyways lol

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[eldricho]

Terrible news, but agree with what Diegonei said.

And the creators of TAT have all already left anyways lol

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Most of them man, most of them
Shame tho, they could have had more bright ideas to spice up BlackBerry 10.
Let TAT loose on BlackBerry 10

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[milo53]

Sad news, Chen is going to strip down to fighting weight and sell what's left.

The brilliant design team should be pissed, I hope they up their game with a firm that respects their talent and dedication.

When BB was down and out, they delivered. I wish them well.....

[DenverRalphy]

Really misleading title by the OP. 90 of 1000 are gone. That's not a shutdown. It's a scale back. Not to mention that it was a hardware group that was scaled back, which has no bearing on BB10 which is a software field.

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[Grivel]

And the creators of TAT have all already left anyways lol

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And not all of the creators are the guys wo made the stunning ui.
Most of those guys are still on board



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[Blackberry_Boss]

Thanks for the clarification on the OS and hardware part.

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[JBhar]

Just drove past BlackBerry Ottawa and the parking lot if still pretty full

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[Blackberry_Boss]

Let's hope it stays like that.

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[milo53]

Just drove past BlackBerry Ottawa and the parking lot if still pretty full

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BB is closing Ottawa office.

[ealvnv]

Product development doesn't necessarily means phones only, it means any product made by BlackBerry, ie music gateway, bluetooth speaker, cases and so on.

[gregstaa]

Recently BlackBerry struck a deal to outsource R&D to an Indian tech firm, maybe this story is relative to that?

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[cjcampbell]

BB is closing Ottawa office.

Only that part of the Ottawa office.

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[sixpacker]

Really misleading title by the OP. 90 of 1000 are gone. That's not a shutdown. It's a scale back. Not to mention that it was a hardware group that was scaled back, which has no bearing on BB10 which is a software field.

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This is on top of the 120 from the Waterloo wireless group and another 120 from the wireless group worldwide. So in total we are looking at a big reduction in the engineering team.
Chen is managing a withdrawal to being a very small niche player.

[bakron1]

As a business person who is in the auto industry here in the USA and has seen the gutting of our industry here, I can relate to what's happening at Blackberry.

But, in this highly competitive business world and the availability of outside engineering sources. It's cheaper to outsource some of the engineering service to cut cost.

At this stage of the game, Mr Chen has to do what he can to stop the bleeding and that means consolidating resources and reducing staff. As much as we hate to see this happening, it's called reality in the business world.




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[sixpacker]

As a business person who is in the auto industry here in the USA and has seen the gutting of our industry here, I can relate to what's happening at Blackberry.

But, in this highly competitive business world and the availability of outside engineering sources. It's cheaper to outsource some of the engineering service to cut cost.

At this stage of the game, Mr Chen has to do what he can to stop the bleeding and that means consolidating resources and reducing staff. As much as we hate to see this happening, it's called reality in the business world.




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You should also be aware then that outsourcing is no panacea and often a false economy. As well as being morally bankrupt in exporting the jobs of your own citizens (and the future of your youth) it's often a disaster in terms of quality and company communication.
P. S I notice chens cost savings doesn't extend to relocating to Waterloo...

[donmateo]

You should also be aware then that outsourcing is no panacea and often a false economy. As well as being morally bankrupt in exporting the jobs of your own citizens (and the future of your youth) it's often a disaster in terms of quality and company communication.
P. S I notice chens cost savings doesn't extend to relocating to Waterloo...

Outsourcing and offshoring are two different terms. The one you are speaking of is offshoring. Outsourcing just means work is no longer done in-house, but rather by another organization which may be cheaper, more specialized and more efficient. This other organization could be across the street or across the world. Offshoring means sending work to other countries typically for lower cost-higher skill labor and more rapid production.

[sixpacker]

Outsourcing and offshoring are two different terms. The one you are speaking of is offshoring. Outsourcing just means work is no longer done in-house, but rather by another organization which may be cheaper, more specialized and more efficient. This other organization could be across the street or across the world. Offshoring means sending work to other countries typically for lower cost-higher skill labor and more rapid production.

Thanks for the clarification, generally though the two go hand in hand, certainly in BlackBerry's case.
I reiterate, certainly in the case of IT services and software development, offshoring is frequently a false economy.

[Blackberry_Boss]

Thanks for the clarification, generally though the two go hand in hand, certainly in BlackBerry's case.
I reiterate, certainly in the case of IT services and software development, offshoring is frequently a false economy.

Well we already know the software testing will be done in India. Hardware will be done in China by Foxconn. The only thing that will be done in house is software development and I'm sure you only need 3 divisions for it. The three would be enterprise, consumer, and whatever BlackBerry Sweden is doing. I guess all the talk about selling off property I'd good then since you don't really need the space.

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[Dave Bourque]

Really misleading title by the OP. 90 of 1000 are gone. That's not a shutdown. It's a scale back. Not to mention that it was a hardware group that was scaled back, which has no bearing on BB10 which is a software field.

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Finally someone speaks the truth and sense... there was no way that they would cut software guys...

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