Canada's Silicon Valley hit by BlackBerry fall 

(MENAFN) Waterloo, Ontario is a town in Canada that has been hit by BlackBerry's decline, reported AP.

BlackBerry transformed Waterloo, a town of 100,000 people into the Canadian Silicon Valley. Now of 16,500 employees remaining at Research In Motion (RIM), BlackBerry's owner, 7,500 of those live in Waterloo. RIM warned of significant job cuts because of profits losses for the second consecutive quarter.

RIM's downfall has occurred at lighting speed, one day BlackBerry had the newest and most innovative smartphone technology and was backed by celebrities like Oprah and Tome Cruise. Now BlackBerry is less user-friendly than the alternative and more popular options like Apple's iPhone or Google's Android.

The RIM tablet, called the PlayBook published sales of 500,000 compared to the iPad's 11.8 million last year.

The hope of Waterloo and BlackBerry all depend on the BlackBerry 10, a smartphone coming out later on this year with a brand-new operating system that is more customer-friendly.