Since BlackBerry announced it was to ditch the idea of an outright sale and instead oust Thorsten Heins as CEO in favour of John Chen, all eyes have been on the company to see what it will do next - and how that will affect consumers.
The new chief executive officer has now made his first big move, axing three significant members of the firm's management structure as he looks to trim the company into one more focused on specific products. He also released a statement in which he made mention of how he sees the new BlackBerry. And thankfully, it does involve new mobile devices
Kristian Tear, the chief operating officer; Frank Boulben, chief marketing officer; and Brian Bidulka, chief financial officer, are all to leave - the first two automatically (and with healthy payouts, we imagine) and the last will stay for a consultation hand-over period until the end of the fiscal year. He will be replaced as CFO by James Yersh who is promoted internally.
But it is Chen's statement beyond his thanking those leaving for their hard work that is of most interest. "BlackBerry has a strong cash position and continues, by a significant margin, to be the top provider of trusted and secure mobile device management solutions to enterprise customers around the world," he said.
"Building on this core strength, and in conjunction with these management changes, I will continue to align my senior management team and organisational structure, and refine the Company’s strategy to ensure we deliver the best devices, mobile security and device management through BES 10, provide multi-platform messaging solutions with BBM, and expand adoption of QNX embedded systems."
There's no mention of further developing BlackBerry OS 10, but at least the company is still looking to develop hardware.