Blackberry is set to cut some 4,500 employees from their workforce worldwide in a bid to stem expected losses for this quarter. To this end, Blackberry will be dropping 40% of their staff, due to the losses which are being primarily laid at the door of poor sales of the company’s Z10 handset.

Blackberry is expected to report losses for the quarter of just shy of $1 billion this week, on 27 September. Blackberry’s shares dipped by 17% following the outlook announcement.

CEO Thorston Heins said in a statement “We are implementing the difficult, but necessary operational changes announced today to address our position in a maturing and more competitive industry, and to drive the company toward profitability.”

He went on to say “Going forward, we plan to refocus our offering on our end-to-end solution of hardware, software and services for enterprises and the productive, professional end user. This puts us squarely on target with the customers that helped build BlackBerry into the leading brand today for enterprise security, manageability and reliability.”