(This has been rumored for a few days) Motorola cutting 4,000 jobs Electronics maker zeroes in on devices division; says cost-cutting measures could save $1.5 billion in 2009. By Kenneth Musante, CNNMoney.com staff writer Last Updated: January 14, 2009: 6:33 PM ET NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Electronics maker Motorola said Wednesday it will be cutting 4,000 jobs this year in an attempt to cut costs. The new job cuts follow the announcement of 3,000 job eliminations in late 2008. About 3,000 of the newly announced cuts will come from Motorola's Mobile Devices division, which has been under pressure from plummeting mobile phone sales. The rest will come from corporate and business divisions, according to Motorola. Motorola's Mobile Devices division shipped about 19 million units during the fourth quarter, the company said, which is down significantly from the 40.9 million units reported shipped during the same period a year ago. "They're losing so much money in handsets that they're facing negative cashflow in 2009 for the entire company," said Edward Snyder, principal analyst with Charter Equity Research. With the slowdown in the global economy, profit from Motorola's other businesses are no longer enough to sustain the weight of the company's money-losing handset division, according to Snyder. Motorola said it expected to report a loss of between 7 cents and 8 cents a share on sales of between $7.0 billion to $7.2 billion for the fourth quarter. Losses will include restructuring charges, as well as investment losses. The company said it would announce its fourth-quarter earnings on Feb. 3. Chances that Motorola's mobile division could recover are "small but fleeting," said Snyder. Motorola said last month that it was freezing employee pension plans and no longer matching 401(k) contributions. The company also froze the salaries of many of its top executives, with co-CEOs John Brown and Sanjay Jha taking a 25% pay cut for 2009. The new job cuts, along with the other cost-saving measures announced in the fourth quarter, should save the company about $1.5 billion in 2009, Motorola (MOT, Fortune 500) said. Motorola announced early last year that it intended to spin off its Mobile Devices business, but has not announced any potential buyers. First Published: January 14, 2009: 5:49 PM ET SW
Motorola needs to come up with some new phones & stop relying on the Razr design, they are such a mess right now & I wonder if the split up will come soon enough & help them or be the end of them in the cellphone market. This economy isn't helping either, Nokia is starting to hurt and that's not good for the other manufactures other then RIM & Apple.
It is too late for them to sell or spin off their mobile devices business. There's not enough credit and the market conditions are too bad. They have to let it sink or swim. The only thing they can do is cut it down to the minimum they need to get out some android phones. They've still got a good brand. If they can get some good product out they'll do fine. If not, they'll be shut down.
I think they have come out with some new phones, but they have not been well publicized. It's hard for any company to make a splash in the age of iPhones and Blackberries. Motorola just needs to cut back. The RAZR exploded in popularity and sorta artificially inflated their market share. Now this is just a correction. It probably won't ever get to the point it once was, but Motorola should accept this and downsize both the size of their workforce (which they obviously are) and they should downsize their expectations too.
AnthroMatt is right. They do have a number of phones out, most are decent, that just are not getting the right attention. I wonder how many of these jobs being cut are in marketing and public relations.
I still think they should bring out a new and modernized version of the StarTac with today's more advanced features.
They do make decent phones, but the newer ones seem to have some software issues, at least the PTT Verizon phones do, everyone of us with it have the same issues. We have to remove the batteries at least weekly to get the phone to work again (mainly PTT but sometimes for messages & phone calls) I agree Larry that was a good phone.
If they spin off the mobile phone groups, there won't be much of Motorola left! They've spun off a lot of business units over the last few years.
Maybe it is Verizon's fault (or rather, maybe Moto wrote bad software for VZW). I have noted any serious software issues with my V950. Some Sprint people do complain about an issue with the backlight staying on and only resetting with a battery pull, but I haven't had that problem yet. Sprint has their own custom menus and everything but you can switch back to the Motorola default. I am guessing that with VZW there is no option to go to Motorola default?
No there is no option to go to Moto default and I am not sure if that would help the phone not working with PTT or like yesterday at a fire scene, the chief called me & my phone locked up when I went to answer it, I had to remove the battery so I could call him back. I haven't had an issue with the backlight yet, and that wouldn't be bad if that was the only problem. It could be Verizon's software on it, or a combo of both the software & their PTT network and trying to get the bugs out of it. I don't know anyone with the LG to see if they are having the same problems or not, just seems when we need them most, they don't work.
That's no good at all. The only time my phone has locked up just happened last night when I was trying to access pictures on my memory card.
