Google will be cutting 4,000 jobs at Motorola Mobility, roughly 20 percent of its workforce. One-third of those jobs will be in the US.
"While Motorola expects this strategy to create new opportunities and help return its mobile devices unit to profitability, it understands how hard these changes will be for the employees concerned," a Motorola representative told AllThingsD, the Wall Street Journal's technology blog. "Motorola is committed to helping them through this difficult transition and will be providing generous severance packages, as well as outplacement services to help people find new jobs."
The blog also reports that Motorola will see roughly one-third of its 94 facilities shut.
Google acquired Motorola in May of this year for $12.5 billion for the purpose of benefiting from its vast portfolio of patents.
The internet giant gave a return to profitability for Motorola as motivation for the measures; and says it expects severance-related costs of no more than $275 million, Bloomberg reports.
Google also wants to make Motorola more competitive with Apple and Samsung, strengthen its Android production, cease the manufacture of low-end products, get out of unprofitable markets, and broaden its horizons in hardware manufacturing, the New York Times says. It also plans to streamline its cellphone offerings.
"We're excited about the smartphone business," Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside, a Google executive before the acquisition, told the paper. "The Google business is built on a wired model, and as the world moves to a pretty much completely wireless model over time, it's really going to be important for Google to understand everything about the mobile consumer."
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