mainframe technology: Motorola Mobility cutting 4000 jobs

Sunday, August 19, 2012

Motorola Mobility cutting 4000 jobs

by John Atchison

Created on: August 15, 2012 ??Last Updated: August 18, 2012

Google is a company known for producing winning products. The Google search engine is number one in the business, and numerous other software ventures have brought the corporation billions of dollars. That was why the purchase of Motorola Mobility seemed to be a strange maneuver to be making, not to mention an expensive one. The software giant doled out $12.5 billion for the floundering company, which had long lost its place as the number one phone manufacturer. The question became what was the end game behind the purchase?

One thing is for sure, and that is that Google did not purchase the business so that it could hemorrhage money. After all, Motorola has not shown much of a winning formula in the past few years. According to a USA Today piece, the one time phone giant has posted losing numbers 14 out of the last 16 quarters. That is why the company lost $249 million dollars in 2011, a huge increase from the $86 million it lost in 2010. With that in mind, Google will begin the rebuilding process by cutting 4000 jobs from Motorola Mobility.

This could have been devastating news to an already struggling American economy until news came that most of the cuts will be coming at overseas sites. Part of the strategy will include cutting down on the number of manufacturing facilities that Motorola Mobility operates out of. At its peak, the company had 90 factories going, but Google will be trying to merge certain ones together, while eliminating others altogether. One of their goals is to cut out a third of those facilities by the time they are done.

Google then hopes to redefine the products that the Motorola Mobility brand puts out. Gone will be the days when the focus will be trying to compete with the big boys in the high end feature arena. Instead, the company will look to put devices that carry a certain amount of innovation, but reflect better on the bottom line. It has done Motorola no good trying to compete with the higher end products, so perhaps this signals a change to bringing phones that will be more cost effective for the consumer.

Ridding the market of a lower rung competitor could also be a Google objective. The acquisition of Motorola gives Google patents in the smartphone arena that they can take advantage of in the future. It should be noted that Motorola has been surpassed in their market by Samsung. Samsung dominates the mobile phone manufacturing business now, which makes Google quite happy. That is because Samsung phones are powered by Android, which of course comes via Google.? It could be that Google simply bought Motorola for the patents, in hopes of helping Samsung down the road.? That could mean further cuts are afoot for Motorola workers.

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