Is Blackberry dead? Company lays off 4500

Blackberry has gone from smartphone leader to last place failure in a few years. The company has just laid off 4500 and reported $1 billion loss and has left people wondering is Blackberry dead?

Around 2008 Blackberry used to be one  of those phones business people had or rather they were fashionable. People could email from their phones and it had a keyboard, amazing I know. Back then having a Blackberry phone was almost like a status symbol as those phones were not cheap and nor was the service. From 2010 Blackberry has gone from a leader of the smartphone market to virtually last place in 2013 and things have never looked worse for the company. In 2011 at the World Mobile Congress, Blackberry had a large stand in the App section and there was so much talk about how they were creating their own app market place probably because that is what Apple and Android had by then. They wanted more developers to get on board with Blackberry and were ready to announce the launch of their new phones and new operating system. However it was over 2 years later that they finally delivered something. The company took a major risk and failed miserably. I feel sorry for the app development companies that believed in Blackberry and were convinced to create apps for them as well. It costs time, money and resources to make an app and when you have to make apps for Android and iPhone then to add a 3rd into the mix makes it tough to justify the expense. Even die hard Blackberry fans like Graeme from AffiliateBible.com have converted and have acknowledged that Blackberry have dropped the ball. Now there are too many loyal Blackberry users making the switch. You'll even see it often enough on facebook with friends announcing "Walking in with a Blackberry, walked out with an iPhone!". Even proud Canadians can't seem to save this company. Blackberry hired Thorsten Heins to help them right the ship. If the company gets bought out, he'll collect a cool $55.6 million but at the rate of things for this company nobody knows what will happen. This seems to be 2 major tech companies in Canada that have brought the country recognition followed by embarrassment. Remember Nortel? That company made Ottawa the tech capital of Canada and when Nortel disappeared, so did Ottawa's reputation as a tech hub. That was taken over by Waterloo and Research in Motion being the centre of that. Now with 4500 jobs being slashed it is going to put a dent into that local economy despite the Waterloo mayor saying the city will be fine. The fall of Blackberry will definitely affect the Canadian economy.

The future of Blackberry

Blackberry are probably going to be acquired by another company as they have valuable patents. Probably the best match might be Microsoft but it's hard to say as Microsoft already has their own mobile software and it might not make sense for them to try to keep 2 different operating systems. Right now with iOS/iPhone and Android owning the market, Microsoft's Windows mobile is going to struggle for the last slice of the pie and nobody knows if there is any left for Blackberry.

Line of the Week (taken from AffiliateBible)

"If you’re one of those poor losers stuck on an Android phone while us cool people rock our Blackberries, be sure to check out Best Android Apps for Webmasters 2011. An absolutely fantastic article, and if I ever lower myself to getting an Android phone or tablet, that’ll be my first stop." Taken from this post: http://www.affiliatebible.com/blog/tgim-routine-rocks.php