BlackBerry shakeup continues as two depart

TORONTO - BlackBerry's interim chief executive has shaken up the management team, in a move seen as prelude to his taking the top job permanently.

Chief operating officer Kristian Tear and Chief marketing officer Frank Boulben, both hired by recently ousted CEO Thorsten Heins, will leave the struggling smartphone maker.

And the company said Monday that Brian Bidulka was being replaced by James Yersh as chief financial officer. Yersh previously served as senior vice president and controller.

Former Sybase CEO John Chen was brought in as the interim chief executive after negotiations to sell the Waterloo, Ontario, company collapsed this month. Chen also serves as executive chair of the board.

BlackBerry lost dominance as the leading smartphone maker as the popularity of the 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.

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

Chen said he would 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 turnaround," Chen said in a statement.

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

"You let whoever is going to be the CEO make 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 $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 said he expected Chen to be named CEO on Dec. 20 when BlackBerry reports third-quarter earnings.

Spokesman Adam Emery said the company would have a further update on its leadership team Dec. 20. Emery said there would not be a chief marketing officer or chief operating officer in its new structure. Gillis said one could infer that an enterprise-focused business would have less need for marketing than a consumer-focused business.

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.

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.

Gillis said Chen 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.

In 1999, BlackBerry became a game-changing breakthrough in personal connectedness. Then came a new generation of competing smartphones, and suddenly the BlackBerry looked ancient.