Following BlackBerry’s announcement that it was bringing the Amazon Appstore to BlackBerry 10, the company has laid off a portion of its developer relations group. A total of 65 employees were let go as BlackBerry focuses “on new programs that will drive enterprise application development” according to a statement received by CBC News. The employees affected were presumably focused on the consumer side.
Not only will the Amazon partnership broaden the consumer app ecosystem to more than 240,000 apps including popular and key apps but it will also allow BlackBerry to focus on its enterprise app ecosystem. As Chen explained to reporters after announcing the company’s latest financial results, “For the first time we finally – quote unquote – solved a big part of our application ecosystem problems.” The Amazon Appstore will launch with BlackBerry 10.3 later this fall.
BlackBerry plans to launch a new enterprise application partner program for corporate developers, ISVs and systems integrators to help grow the enterprise app ecosystem.
Chen did say that the company was nearing the end of job cuts. Over the last few years, it has cut nearly half of its workforce in a bid to turn its fortunes around.
Source : CBC News