BlackBerry to Fire 4,500 as Sales Plunge

BlackBerry Ltd. is eliminating a third of its staff and scaling back operations after quarterly sales missed analysts’ estimates by half, a sign of quickening deterioration at the already struggling smartphone maker.

The company will cut 4,500 jobs and record an inventory writedown of as much as $960 million for the fiscal second quarter, according to a statement today. Waterloo, Ontario-based BlackBerry expects to report a net operating loss of as much as $995 million for the period. Sales were about $1.6 billion, compared with the $3.03 billion average estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. The shares fell the most in three months.