Research In Motion this morning announced that it is reducing its global workforce across all functions by approximately 2,000 employees. Most affected staff, in North America and other parts of the world, should find out this week.
RIM’s cost optimization program is “focused on eliminating redundancies and reallocating resources to focus on areas that offer the highest growth opportunities and alignment with RIM’s strategic objectives. The workforce reduction is believed to be a prudent and necessary step for the long term success of the company and it follows an extended period of rapid growth within the company whereby the workforce had nearly quadrupled in the last five years alone.”
RIM also announced some senior management changes. Among those are the following: Thorsten Heins will become COO, Product and Sales. All product engineering functions, including both hardware and software teams, will now report to him. Jim Rowan will become COO, Operations, and focus on manufacturing, global supply chain and repair services.
Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis are remaining Co-CEOs.