Motorola Mobility needs to cut 4,000 jobs, or one-fifth of its workforce, as part of a new restructuring process set up by its new owner Google. Google hopes to focus Motorola’s energies on handset manufacturing.
Of these 4,000 job losses, two-thirds will come from outside of the US while one-third of the 94 worldwide offices belonging to Motorola will be closed.
Google said that it will spend US$275 million (£175 million) on severance costs for the two quarters until the end of this year, aside from other costs for restructuring the profitability of the phone business.
Dennis Woodside, former Americas boss at Google, said the 27 Motorola devices released last year will be decreased to just a few, adding that the new phones will feature batteries that last for several days, sharper cameras, and a voice recognition application that will be able to determine who is inside a room. A team of acoustics engineers and metal scientists are developing the new phone.
Motorola was once the most dominant phone manufacturer but has slowed its business following the emergence of smartphones and iPhones.
Using the Android software created by Google for its own smartphones, Motorola tried to recover but Apple’s smartphone market in the US fared better. The company’s market for handsets has weakened while its feature phone and smartphone market also declined.
With this in mind, Woodside said the company would just concentrate on new phones rather than struggle to beat the smartphone market in the US.
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