Nokia Siemens to slash workforce at its Motorola unit
Could lose up to 1,500 jobs, or 22% of the Motorola team it bought this year, with the focus likely to be on GSM and WiMAX
Published: 6 August, 2011
READ MORE: People/Management | Nokia Siemens Networks | WiMAX
Nokia Siemens is to axe up to 1,500 jobs worldwide, mainly from the Motorola networks unit it acquired earlier this year. Although CEO Rajeev Suri said, when announcing the purchase, that there were no plans to scale back the payroll, the joint venture is now under far higher pressure to intensify its cost cutting program, having failed to secure new private equity investors in the spring.
After that setback, shareholders in both parent companies were demanding better efficiencies and a new round of cost reductions. However, it was probably always unrealistic to hope there would be only trivial job losses. There is considerable overlap in the GSM businesses of both firms, and this is a market suffering from price wars and volume decline. There is also duplication in LTE, though one of NSN's reasons to be interested in Motorola was its strong engineering resource, and multimode product platforms, in this area.
The cuts could affect about 22% of the Motorola unit's workforce of 6,900. Many of the casualties at Motorola are expected to be in areas where NSN has limited interest, such as WiMAX and possibly CDMA. Although Ericsson and Alcatel both benefited considerably from buying strong CDMA players - Nortel and Lucent respectively - Motorola's CDMA activities are far smaller and the effort of supporting them long term would likely outweigh the scale improvements, especially as the most lucrative CDMA operators are shifting towards LTE. However, dual-technology systems are important when competing for LTE migration deals and so we can expect some of Motorola's CDMA and WiMAX teams to be retained for that purpose.
More PEOPLE/MANAGEMENT News
More NOKIA SIEMENS NETWORKS News
More WIMAX News
COMMENTS
Carrier Broadband Performance: Africa & Middle East
Carriers are using mobile broadband as their weapon of choice in the fight against the commoditization of voice and falling ARPU. This...
Voice over LTE: Market Analysis and Forecasts
VoLTE offer unique advantages in lowering a carrier's voice infrastructure economics and promises to improve voice quality, device...
Satellite Phones: Will Dual Mode Help the Phoenix Rise from the Ashes?
Satellite phones have followed an arduous path since their much-hyped launch more than a decade ago. The hype was followed by an e...
