Motorola cuts 3,000 jobs, delays spinoff of cell phone unit

NEW YORK : Motorola Inc. announced on Thursday that it was cutting its global workforce by 4.5 percent, or some 3,000 employees, and delaying the spinoff of its troubled cell phone unit.

Motorola, the largest US mobile phone manufacturer, announced the job cuts just hours after reporting a quarterly net loss of nearly 400 million dollars and said more than two-thirds of the layoffs would be in the handset division.

The ailing company had 66,000 employees worldwide at the end of 2007.

The Schaumburg, Illinois-based company said it suffered a net loss of 397 million dollars in the third quarter of the year after reporting a net profit of 60 million dollars for the same period last year.

Motorola lowered its forecast for the rest of the year and said it would carry out cost-cutting moves next year expected to result in annual savings of some 800 million dollars.

It said separation of the struggling mobile phone unit from the rest of the company was now "targeted beyond 2009."

"While our strategic intent to separate the company remains intact, we are no longer targeting the third quarter of 2009," Sanjay Jha, Motorola co-chief executive and head of its mobile devices division, said in a statement.

Jha, who took over the mobile devices unit in August, attributed the delay to "the macroeconomic environment, stresses in the financial markets and the changes underway in Mobile Devices.

"As part of our plan to rebuild Mobile Devices, we have announced significant actions to accelerate the consolidation of our product platforms and refocus our investment and market priorities," he said.

"These efforts will result in a leaner organization with a more competitive and cost-effective product portfolio."

The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that Motorola plans to cut back on the number of software platforms it uses in its mobile phones.

Jha is looking at using Google's Android open-source operating system and just two other software platforms -- Microsoft's Windows Mobile and its own P2K platform -- and would abandon at least four other platforms, the paper said.

It said Motorola is hoping that using an open-source platform will spur outside developers to come up with applications that would allow Motorola to compete with Apple's iPhone and Research In Motion's BlackBerry.

Motorola has been losing ground in recent years to Apple and RIM as well as other major cell phone makers such as Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson.

The world's fourth-largest mobile phone maker reported third-quarter sales of 7.5 billion dollars, down 15 percent from the same period last year.

It said sales of mobile devices totalled 3.1 billion dollars in the quarter, down 31 percent from a year ago, and the unit rang up an operating loss of 840 million dollars compared with a loss of 248 million dollars a year ago.

Motorola posted a loss of 18 cents per share for the quarter but forecast earnings per share for the full year in a range of five to seven cents.

- AFP /ls

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Hahahaha.. Worked 8 months... my life is so FULL OF WONDERS!!
1. Broke up
2. Failed in exam
3. Perhaps retrenchment

*EMO* :P