Motorola To Lay Off Another 4,000 Company Says Cuts Are Primarily in the Mobile Devices Business
By Todd Spangler Multichannel News 1/14/2009 3:34:00 PM http://www.multichannel.com/index.asp?layout=articlePrint&articleID=CA6629754 Motorola announced Wednesday it would lay off an additional 4,000 employees this year, including 3,000 positions in the Mobile Devices business and 1,000 in corporate functions and other business units. Motorola also said it would miss expectations for fourth quarter 2008 sales, which it now forecasts to be in the range of $7.0 billion to $7.2 billion compared with analyst consensus estimates of $7.51 billion. The company expects a net loss from continuing operations in the range of $0.07 to $0.08 per share including special charges for reorganization and impairments of Motorola's investment in Clearwire. Motorola said once it closes its books the net loss for the quarter could be larger. The Schaumburg, Ill.-based company expects to announce fourth-quarter 2008 financial results on Feb. 3. The latest layoffs— expected to begin immediately—are in addition to the 3,000 employees Motorola said in October it would eliminate. Along with Motorola’s actions freezing pensions and most salaries, the 7,000 layoffs are anticipated to result in aggregate cost savings of $1.5 billion in 2009. Motorola said mobile devices sales in the fourth quarter were “adversely impacted by continued weakness in end consumer demand and customer inventory reductions,” while the other units—Enterprise Mobility Solutions and the cable-focused Home and Networks Mobility businesses—continued to perform very well in a challenging environment. In the previous round of layoffs, Motorola substantially cut back its video-on-demand and switched digital video teams, according to company sources. About half of the 150 employees in the on-demand video group were eliminated and 10 of the 26 people in Motorola’s switched digital video group were laid off. -- ================================ George Antunes, Political Science Dept University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204 Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927 Mail: antunes at uh dot edu *********************************** * POST TO [email protected] * *********************************** Medianews mailing list [email protected] http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews
