“Google Inc.’s Motorola Mobility hardware unit has begun laying off about 1,200 employees, or more than 10% of its headcount, according to a company email reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, as the smartphone maker continues trying to return to profitability,” Amir Efrati reports for The Wall Street Journal.
“Motorola staffers were informed by the company via email this week that ‘while we’re very optimistic about the new products in our pipeline, we still face challenges,” Efrati reports. “The company email added that ‘our costs are too high, we’re operating in markets where we’re not competitive and we’re losing money.’ The layoffs will affect workers in the U.S., China and India.”
Efrati reports, “The new cuts come on top of a 20% reduction of Motorola’s workforce that started last August, when it said it would lay off 4,000 employees. As of the end of 2012, Google said Motorola had 11,113 employees. That didn’t include the Motorola Home business, which makes television set-top boxes and was sold to Arris Group Inc. for $2.35 billion in December.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Apple resurrects Multi-Touch™ patent claim against Google’s Motorola – March 7, 2013
Motorola Mobility phone revenue plummets in Q412 as losses mount – January 23, 2013
Samsung to sell Tizen-based phones after Google’s Motorola Mobility buy – January 3, 2013
Google’s Motorola Mobility designing ‘X phone’ and ‘X tablet’ in hopes of competing with Apple iPhone – December 21, 2012
Apple wins another one as U.S. ITC judge rules Google Motorola Mobility phone patent invalid – December 19, 2012
Steven P. Jobs Trust now making money off Motorola Mobility Android phones – November 3, 2012
Google warns of more job cuts at Motorola Mobility, increases Q3 severance cost estimates – October 4, 2012
DROID… What?….
And does *anyone* still claim Google bought Moto for anything other than its patents?
Worthless FRAND patents at that. But I do believe Google wanted in on the hardware game and they saw this as an opportunity.
totally agreed. They thought they could use Moto’s expertise to launch the Nexus brand of hardware (a full line-up, not one flagship a year)
Moto turns out to be major dud. It’s unprofitable quarter over quarter, so GOOG is paying even more than their $12B purchase price.
And I thought Sprint/Nextel and AOL/TimeWarner were bad mergers.
You do not design new hardware (innovative or not) for a full line of systems by laying off half your staff within a year. Hell, Moto barely came out with a new concept and variations on a theme for just phones with the entire staff they had before. Now the thought is they want to design a full suite of products across multiple mobile target spaces (phone, tablet, personal devices, etc.) with half the staff.?
I’m not buying it, and no one else should either.
Yes, you can come up with design concepts with just a handful of people. To do the detail design, prototype testing, FCC/ITU/etc. testing and filings, field tests, etc. requires a significant staff of competent people.
They cut over a third of the staff before things got bad. (They were never good since the Iridium fiasco.) Now it’s going from bad to worse and they’re cutting more staff. In the not too distant future they’ll be down to just the legal staff at Moto.
The Manipulator: Google’s innovative statement about new products in the pipeline is nothing short of revolutionary. Why no CEO has ever thought of saying something like this before is a clear statement that Google is a world leader. Google has brilliantly incorporated the novel and inventive statement with other traditional statements such as “our costs are too high, we’re operating in markets where we’re not competitive and we’re losing money.” A big load appeal to a more than waiting Wall Street is expected soon. Expect massive gains on Google’s stock value as Google paves the way with statements no other CEO could ever conceive of making.
“we’re operating in markets where we’re not competitive”
nuff said
Before the iPhone the market could, and did, support a host of competitors because everything looked and worked essentially the same (except Blackberry).
iPhone changed the paradigm and suddenly all those manufacturers were lost. Counting on their OS “partner” to provide them with something competitive, and not getting it until it was to late.
MOT is dead meat and will soon be joined by others.
Samsung’s strategy to copy iPhone IP was brilliant. They secured their position as fairly solid #2 player, and so far its only cost them legal, but look at the time they bought to establish their brand.
HelloBye, bye, MotoThese were not the DROIDS we were looking for…