RIM to cut 2,000 jobs… and loses head of global sales to Sonos

A double blow for beleaguered BlackBerry manufacturer RIM comes as it plans to slash 2,000 jobs globally as part of a major restructuring and its head of global sales has been poached by home audio company Sonos.

Business Insider reports that the cuts at RIM, which has suffered dramatically in the smartphone market due to Apple and Android, would be equal to 12% of its workforce. Meanwhile, global sales head Patrick Spence has defected to Sonos, partly because he was “growing disillusioned with the company after being passed over for COO” according to unnamed sources.

Like Nokia, BlackBerry has struggled to make the transition into touchscreen smartphones, leaving Apple and those running on the Android OS (most notably HTC) to clean up. The situation is exacerbated by app developers not giving BlackBerry even a fraction of the attention they give to iOS and Android, creating a vicious circle where there are fewer apps and therefore less incentive for consumers to buy the handsets. As an indication of where the music sector regards RIM, last year Mobile Roadie pulled out of BlackBerry, claiming that user engagement within apps was so low as to make it pointless. With condemnation like that, the crawl back to market relevance will be a long and painful one.

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