Blackberry announced, Monday, that its chief operating officer and chief marketing officer have stepped down. The company will also be replacing its chief financial officer.
Chief Operating Officer Kristian Tear, and Chief Marketing Officer Frank Boulben were hired during the tenure of the previous CEO Thorsten Heins, who was replaced earlier this month by John Chen.
James Yersh, who was controller and head of compliance at BlackBerry, will replace Brian Bidulka as head of finances. Bidulka will be departing after serving the company for eight long years.
The sweeping changes are not surprising, though. Post BlackBerry launch, Boulben was widely criticized for an ineffective marketing strategy for its flagship devices.
Roger Martin, a board member since 2007, has also resigned.
The struggling handset maker recently shelved the idea of selling itself and instead raised $1 billion via a convertible notes offering by one of its largest shareholders. Subsequently, company replaced CEO Thorstein Heins with interim CEO John S. Chen.
In a statement, Chen sounded extremely optimistic about the company's growth and position which is a warming sign. "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 organizational 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," Chen said.
Experts and investors have welcomed the idea of reorganization. "The organization was top-heavy to begin with.If the management team was not effective, it made sense to start with a clean slate," said Sameet Kanade, an analyst at Jacob Securities Inc. in Toronto.
