SITUATION WAS tense at the BlackBerry headquarters in Waterloo in Canada when the parent company, Research In Motion (RIM) axed almost 11 per cent of its total workforce worldwide on Monday. The technological giant, which introduced the world to smart phones, brought down its workforce to 17,000 after giving 2,000 employees the pink slip.

The cut, which is undoubtedly the steepest in the company’s history, saw the employees being fired from its 9000 strong staff from the headquarters in Waterloo.

The report further stated that if anyone was panicking within RIM on the day the company announced its worst job losses since its creation in 1984, no one would admit it publicly. The troubled high-tech firm, which employs about 9,000 locally, has laid off people before - 200 last month and another 220 nine years ago - but it's never faced a slashing of jobs like this.

Soon after the news broke out, BlackBerry’s arch rival iPhone recorded heavy upsurge in its shares.