Motorola Planning Huge Job Cuts in Handset Division

Motorola is reported to be planning huge job cuts at its handsets division amid a cut-back in the number of phones the company plans to launch during this year. The phone news site, PhoneScoop also reported that the company may decide not to have a display stand at the CTIA Wireless trade show in April.

The website was citing an unnamed source at the company.

The job cuts are said to be significant - and could amount to half the staff at the handset division.

At the end of last year, the firm announced plans to cut a further 400 jobs on top of the 1,500 cuts announced in October. The earlier termination of approximately 1,500 employees, primarily in the Mobile Devices segment will result in pre-tax charges of $104 million in the fourth quarter of 2008.

Last August, the firm recruited former Qualcomm exec, Sanjay Jha to head up the handset division and prepare it for a sale - later cancelled. He said in an interview shortly after taking the job that he would seek to implement changes quickly within the company, although he warned that it was too early to tell when phones with his fingerprints would hit the market given the long handset design cycles.

On the web: PhoneScoop

Posted to the site on 13th January 2009