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It has been another tough week for employees at Research in Motion (RIM). The company behind the ground-breaking BlackBerry smartphone has continued its major restructuring campaign with thousands more layoffs. At the same time, new reports are ... suggesting the Waterloo, Canada-based firm could soon split in two, in which case big-time tech firms like Amazon or Facebook might move in to acquire a half. It has been rumored for several months that RIM would make significant layoffs after the failure last year of several key products. The most notable disappointment was the company's PlayBook ... (view more)

The world's largest mobile phone maker says it plans to eliminate roughly 4,000 manufacturing positions, or about 7 per cent of its entire work force. Nokia cited efforts to become more efficient in its production of smartphones as the main reason ... behind the cutback. On Wednesday, February 8, 2012, the Espo, Finland-based firm announced that it would eliminate certain jobs from three of its major factories, specifically those located in Komarom, Hungary, Reynosa, Mexico, and Salo, Finland. Nokia says the bulk of the planned layoffs will come at its Hungarian facility, with less drastic cuts ... (view more)

Facing declining sales of its powerful PlayStation 3 video game console, Sony has announced it will drastically cut the price of the device. Cuts have already been made at retailers, and in some cases represent overall price reductions of 17 per ... cent. Pressure's been on Sony to decrease the cost of its flagship console since the holiday season, when Microsoft released the Kinect hands-free peripheral to major fanfare . Sony's rival device, the Move, hasn't sold nearly as well, and that's hurt sales of the PlayStation 3 (PS3). All Major Markets See Price Reductions Given the rising competition ... (view more)

Amazon has slashed the price of several versions of its Microsoft Office 2010 applications suite. Cuts have been as high as 13 per cent at the online retailer, which insists the reductions have nothing to do with weak demand. Leading the cuts is the ... Home and Student version of Office: Microsoft lists the software at $149, but Amazon currently posts it at just $129. Receiving slightly less drastic cuts is the Home and Business edition, available for $259 (usually $279) and the Professional version, listed at $459 by Microsoft but sold by Amazon for a whopping $499. (Source: informationweek.com ... (view more)

Sometimes a recession has its benefits. Some retailers have little choice but to drop their prices in a desperate attempt to win that hard-fought consumer dollar. Take the case of Intel, which recently revealed that it will be dropping the prices of ... several of its popular microprocessors. On the chopping block is the popular high-end Core 2 Quad processors for desktop computers (roughly 4x the power of a single processor chip) and the company's Xeon line of chips, specifically engineered for single-socket servers. Officially, the cuts stem from a desire to clear out inventory space for a ... (view more)

It seems not even Microsoft is impervious to the effects of this increasingly painful recession. According to reports, the Redmond-based company is preparing to lay off about 17 per cent of its entire workforce in the coming months. Despite its ... portfolio diversity -- including operating systems, antivirus software, and video game consoles -- Microsoft is clearly feeling the pressure applied by a tightening global economy. In fact, there seems to be a sense of emergency to the massive cuts (about 15,000 workers out of 90,000), which rumors suggest should be made official by January 15. As ... (view more)