Pink slips and severance packages are going around for 20% of Motorola’s work force, says parent company Google in a new filing. Two-thirds of those layoffs will be outside the United States. While a lot of these eliminations are likely aimed at redundancies in Google and its fairly new acquisition, there is also a notion of forming a leaner Motorola that could potentially serve as the main hardware operation for Google. Google exes have already said that Motorola was making way too many different kinds of smartphones and tablets. Google has had mixed success with its own branded hardware but people probably feel better buying an Android tablet or phone from a company that has been making them for a while.
That way the rest of the company could focus on driverless cars, freaky glasses, and, oh yeah, search engines.
Bloomberg quotes Google:
“These changes are designed to return Motorola’s mobile devices unit to profitability,” Google said in the filing. “Investors should expect to see significant revenue variability for Motorola for several quarters. While lower expenses are likely to lag the immediate negative impact to revenue, Google sees these actions as a key step for Motorola to achieve sustainable profitability.”
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