BlackBerry shakeup continues as COO, CMO and CFO leave company

BlackBerry Chief Operating Officer (COO) Kristian Tear and Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Frank Boulben, both hired by recently ousted CEO Thorsten Heins, will leave the struggling smartphone maker.

BlackBerry said Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Brian Bidulka is also being replaced by James Yersh. Yersh previously served as senior vice president and controller.

The most recent shake up in the management is seen as a prelude to intertim CEO John Chen taking the top job himself.

The former Sybase CEO was brought in after negotiations to sell the Ontario-based company collapsed this month. Chen also serves as executive chair of the board.

In a statement, Chen said he'll continue to align the management team with his priorities. "I look forward to working more directly with the talented teams of engineers, and the sales and marketing teams around the world to facilitate the BlackBerry turn-around."

The company recently announced 4,500 layoffs, or 40 per cent of its global workforce, and reported a quarterly loss of nearly $1 billion.

Blackberry quickly lost dominance as a leading smartphone maker as the popularity of Apple's iPhone surged. The much-hyped BlackBerry 10 system, its latest phones, were a flop. The company disclosed in September that it would book nearly a billion dollars in losses related to unsold phones.

BlackBerry spokesman Adam Emery said the company will have a further update on its leadership team on December 20. He said the company will not have a CMO and a COO in its new organization structure.

Fairfax head Prem Watsa, BlackBerry's largest shareholder, has praised Chen's work turning-around Sybase, an enterprise software data management company. Chen was chairman and CEO from 1998 until the company was acquired in 2010 by SAP AG.

Chen, whose background is in enterprise software, has placed much more of an emphasis on BlackBerry's software business than its handset, or smartphone business.

He had told The Associated Press earlier this month that he would be looking for a CEO with a strong software and services background, and noted that he wanted to monetise BlackBerry Messenger, the popular messaging application.

BlackBerry also has a mobile device management business, which allows IT departments to manage different devices connected to their corporate networks.

The company is worth $3.2 billion. It once had a market cap of over $80 billion.

BGC analyst Colin Gillis said the reshaping of a leadership team is what a CEO does and that the company should just name Chen as CEO.

"You let whoever is going to be the CEO makes those decisions. It kind of bothers me because it just seems like the search process is a farce. I mean the guy has a more than an $80 million pay package. He's blown out every other top manager. That's not your decision to make as interim CEO," Gillis said.

Gillis expects Chen to be named CEO on December 20 when BlackBerry reports third quarter earnings.

He said Chen clearly wants to make BlackBerry more of a software company. The new direction could mean the company might ultimately get out of the business of selling smartphones. "The path that he's choosing, it might work, or he could kill the completely, whatever value it has left," Gillis said.