ORIGINAL FRENCH ARTICLE: 4000 suppressions d’emplois chez Motorola Mobility
by anonymous
Translated Thursday 16 August 2012, by Derek Hanson
and reviewed byGoogle, which bought Motorola’s cellphone division for $12.5 billion last year, today is set to axe 4,000 jobs, that is, one in five. One third of its offices are to close.
One-third of the 4,000 jobs lost will be in the United States, but at this point Google has given no details as to the exact location of the jobs concerned outside America. The only other detail given is that Motorola Mobility is to reduce its operations in Asia and center research and development in the USA and Beijing. Google has announced that Motorola Mobility’s activity will henceforth be centered on a few smartphone models. In particular, it will stop making low-end devices.
The news was published in the New York Times on August 13. Google has rushed to react: “Motorola is committed to helping [its employees] in this difficult transition period and will offer them generous layoff indemnities and assistance to help them to find a new job.” The total amount of indemnities should not exceed $275 million. Also according to the New York Times, Google has also decided to let 40 percent of Motorola Mobility’s vice presidents go.
Google bought Motorola’s cellphone division for $12.5 billion in 2011, mainly in order to acquire its more than 17,000 patents. Motorola Mobility, formerly number one on the cellphone market, missed the smartphone transition and got left in the dust, leaving the road wide open for Samsung and Apple.