RIM just issued a press release stating that they’ve hired J.P. Morgan Securities and RBC Capital Markets to help with a “strategic review” of their company. This deal was certainly expected as rumours started to fly about a month ago. In their press release, which apparently came directly from CEO Thorsten Heins, stated that he’s aware of the “significant transformation” that’s currently happening at RIM and “will continue to be challenging for the next few quarters.”
Earlier this week there were reports that RIM will cut between 2,000 – 6,000 jobs, this is also expected to happen on Friday and is part of their CORE (cost optimization and resource efficiency) program. In total RIM is looking to save $1 billion by the end of fiscal 2013 and includes “better efficiency and use of resources in our sales and marketing,” plus “eliminating fragmentation, duplication and inefficiencies” and “headcount reductions.”
The consulting deal with J.P. Morgan Securities and RBC Capital Markets includes possibly leveraging “the BlackBerry platform through partnerships, licensing opportunities and strategic business model alternatives.”
Heins gave some updated BlackBerry stats – their subscriber base has now reached 78 million and BBM (BlackBerry Messenger) users are now over 59 million worldwide. Warning of missing their Q1 targets were communicated, but quickly following up with that they have about $2.1 billion in available cash. RIM says they’re looking forward to their upcoming BlackBerry 10 OS launch, which is still on track for the “latter part of calendar 2012.”
LOTS of change happening at RIM…
Source: MarketWire
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