Blackberry lays off 200 employees in Canada and America

Smartphone maker Blackberry has said it has laid off 200 employees at its locations in Canada and the US state of Florida. However, previous reports from multiple anonymous sources spoke of 1000 layoffs.

The reports about the layoffs in the Canadian city of Waterloo and the Floridian Sunrise come from MobileSyrup, which bases the news on multiple anonymous sources. In Waterloo, where the lion’s share of layoffs are believed to have fallen, Blackberry is estimated to have 2,700 employees, meaning around 35 percent of them are now out on the street. There have been 75 layoffs in Florida. The focus of the layoffs would lie with the Blackberry 10 and the Devices divisions, the parts respectively responsible for its own OS and the smartphones that run on that OS.

However, in an official statement, the company contradicts those figures. Instead of 1000 layoffs, it would be 200, a much smaller number. The company also states that despite the layoffs, it is “actively looking for new staff in areas where there are growth opportunities.” The reports about the 75 layoffs in Florida are correct, which means that there would have been 125 layoffs in Canada.

Although Blackberry has started using Android for the first time with its new smartphone Priv, the company has recently announced that it has no plans to retire its own operating system yet. CEO John Chen announced in a blog post that several new versions of Blackberry OS 10 will also be released in 2016, which will further improve security and privacy, among other things. As far as new devices are concerned, the company focuses entirely on Android.