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Motorola looking increasingly regional, with cuts in China
Published: 13 February, 2009
Tags >> Motorola
There is further evidence mounting that Motorola may be pulling back to its heartlands in the Americas, and giving up on being a global handset maker. The troubled firm has reportedly laid off 1,000 staff in its R&D facility in China, until recently one of its key hopes for growth and turnaround.
Motorola has already indicated it will virtually pull out of western Europe, and its decision to pare down its new phone line-up dramatically this year, concentrating just on midrange smartphones, will make it less competitive in emerging markets like China and India. Although it has a large number of ultra-low cost handsets, following its over-enthusiastic rush into that segment around 2006, it seems it will severely cut back any updates to those ranges.
Cutbacks at the Wangjing facility were confirmed by Motorola, whose spokesperson said commitment to the market remained unchanged, but it did not give numbers. However, the China Daily newspaper said there were only 100 staff left at the office, which would indicate a major pullback from creating the specialized products, supporting Chinese operators' spectrum bands and user interfaces, that this territory requires.
Last year, Motorola cut 600 jobs from its offices in China. It was once market leader in the country, but lost that position to Nokia.
