The Globe And Mail is reporting that two people who were key figures behind the launch of the BlackBerry 10 OS have left the struggling smartphone company:
T.A. McCann was vice-president of social networks at Blackberry and oversaw operations of its BlackBerry Messenger service and other apps.
Marc Gingras handled the research and development of BlackBerry 10 e-mail, calendar and contacts applications, and its integration into the new BlackBerry Hub.
“We wish them all the best in their future endeavours,” the company said in a short statement.
Both men, who left the company amicably over the past month, became BlackBerry employees through the Waterloo, Ont.-based company’s acquisition of startups.
Read into this what you will. It could be they moved on to better opportunities as that happens all the time and the timing just happens to suck from an optics standpoint for BlackBerry. It could be that people are exiting ahead of a “kaboom” moment. Seeing as BlackBerry recently had a shockingly bad earnings report, that is entirely plausible.
I’ll be watching to see if there is a steady stream of people leaving BlackBerry “amicably.”