2,000 RIM Jobs Axed

The layoffs follow a tumultuous first half of 2011 for the pride of Waterloo, in which the company's stocks fell more than 50 per cent.

Research In Motion announced this morning that the BlackBerry maker is laying off 2,000 employees</a. in a bid to save money after a particularly tough first six months of 2011. The value of the high-tech company from Waterloo, Ont., has been halved since March, when RIM released the ill-fated PlayBook, a tablet computer that was supposed to take on Apple's iPad but came up a little short. Further, its profits are down substantially as new competitors in the mobile phone field, such as phones capable of running Google's Android operating system, have taken a chunk out of the once-dominant BlackBerry's market share.