You know that a company is in trouble financially when they have to reduce one of their most important assets – the human workforce. Sure, having a bloated hierarchy of workers is not the most ideal way of running a company, but when this group of workers are unable to bring in enough revenue to a company that it loses money quarter after quarter – fourteen of the last sixteen quarters, in fact, then you know that it is time for some drastic measures to be taken. Having said that, this is where Motorola Mobility has placed itself in a rather precarious position today – its parent company, Google, has decided to cut around 20% of Motorola Mobility’s workforce in an attempt to revive to company and return it to black.
This translates to approximately 4,000 positions of a total of about 20,000, where two-thirds of the reductions will happen outside the US. Not only that, Motorola Mobility intends to close or consolidate around 30 of its 90 facilities, citing that the company will “shift its emphasis from feature phones to more innovative and profitable devices.” Hopefully they know what they are doing, as it would be a shame to see a company that brought us the classic RAZR as well as Motorola DROID fold up for good.
