Recent news that is nearly impossible to not talk about revolves around Blackberry. In a press release just over a week ago today, Blackberry said it would lay off 45000 employees (40% of it’s workforce) after a reported near billion dollar loss in the quarterly earnings report. As if matters were not already enough under the public eye, Fairfax’s intention to buy the company has caused yet even more attention.
In regard to class, this story is living proof of a subject we have discussed; operations. Blackberry’s loss has been speculated largely due to a mess up on behalf of operations. With their focus on the Z10 and Q10 it is believed that a lot of hardware of previous models went unsold, meanwhile the Z10 and Q10 aren’t selling as well as predicted. Prem Watsa, should he indeed purchase the company “plan’s to to take a page out of Dell’s book”(everydaymoney) and take the company private. He wants to win back some of the business market the company has lost in previous years. In an attempt to save the company he wants to minimize stock, as too much stock was one of the reasons the company has been failing.