Google cut 1,200 more Motorola Mobility jobs
The whipsawed workforce at Motorola Mobility saw another 1,200 jobs go out the door on Friday, completing yet another round for the long struggling mobile phone maker.
The majority of the cuts were taking place outside the United States, such as in China and India, and will continue for an unspecified time. Cuts in the United States were completed on Friday. The company declined to specify the numbers by locations or types of positions, although affected workers received severance packages and outplacement services.
“These cuts are a continuation of the reductions we announced last summer. It’s obviously very hard for the employees concerned, and we are committed to helping them through this difficult transition,” said company spokesman William Moss.
Libertyville-based Motorola Mobility is on track to move its headquarters to downtown Chicago this year, despite the fact it had already lost its incentive package for $10 million a year for 10 years after parent Google announced 4,000 job cuts last year and couldn’t deliver the necessary 2,500 workers.
The company declined to say its overall workforce numbers that may remain since operations are still in flux.
When Mountain View, Calif.-based Google bought Motorola Mobility last year for $12.4 billion, it had about 20,000 employees but declined to provide more up-to-date workforce numbers.
Google had about 53,000 employees as of September 2012.
The online search leader also expects to pare jobs at the division with a planned $2.35 billion sale of the Motorola set-top business, which has about 7,000 employees. The home business, which is being acquired by Arris, is not affected by the current cuts.
The latest cuts continued to fuel speculation that Google bought Motorola primarily for its 17,000 patents, bolstering the company in the mobile device arms race with other technology companies.
The cellphone business has lost market share to Apple and Samsung, however, and posted operating losses of $1.1 billion since Google completed the Motorola deal in May.
Analysts have been concerned that adding a phone manufacturing business could hurt Google’s profitability and potentially alienate the other device makers that use Google’s Android mobile operating system. Samsung, HTC and other phone makers run Android. Apple and BlackBerry have their own systems.
Ÿ Associated Press contributed to this story.