BlackBerry 10 Delayed, RIM Shedding 5,000 Jobs

Research in Motion’s future is looking bleak and it’s betting bleaker by the minute.

In the wake of a stock downgrade, Research in Motion announced that the release BlackBerry 10 is being pushed back to the first quarter of 2013. The smartphone OS, along with the devices that support it, were widely expected to launch this year.

Why the delay? “Over the past several weeks, RIM’s software development teams have made major progress in the development of key features for the BlackBerry 10 platform; however, the integration of these features and the associated large volume of code into the platform has proven to be more time consuming than anticipated,” explained RIM.

RIM CEO Thorsten Heins remains bullish on BlackBerry 10. “We are encouraged by the traction that the BlackBerry 10 platform is gaining with application developers and content partners following the successful BlackBerry Jam sessions that we have held around the world since the beginning of May,” he said in a statement.

RIM’s losses continue to mount. The company reported a loss of $518 million, or $0.99 per share, in the past quarter, ending June 2, 2012. The company posted $695 million shortfall in the same year-ago timeframe and lost $125 million in the prior quarter.

During RIM’s first quarter of its 2013 fiscal year, RIM shipped 7.8 million BlackBerry smartphones and 260,000 PlayBooks.

The company reports that restructuring efforts are currently underway. In an effort to reach $1 billion in cost savings, the smartphone maker will shed 5,000 jobs.

Heins states, “Our top priority going forward is the successful launch of our first BlackBerry 10 device, which we now anticipate will occur in the first quarter of calendar 2013.”