Motorola to axe 4,000 jobs globally, shrink India operations

Zeebiz Bureau

Sunnyvale/New Delhi: Motorola Mobility has reportedly told its employees that it would issue pink slips to around 4,000 people globally and close a third of its 94 offices worldwide.

Ailing Motorola was bought by tech giant Google in May, in one of Google’s biggest acquisition amount of USD 12.5 billion.

A New York Times report said that one-third of the 4,000 jobs lost will be in the United States. The company plans to leave unprofitable markets, stop making low-end devices and focus on a few cellphones instead of dozens, said Dennis Woodside, Motorola's new chief executive, in an interview.

Reportedly, this job cut is Google's steps to reinvent Motorola, which has fallen far behind its biggest competitors like Apple and Samsung. This will also help to shore up Google’s Android mobile business and expand beyond search and software into manufacturing hardware.

Though Google bought Motorola partly because of its more than 17,000 patents, which can help defend against challenges to the Android operating system, it also planned to use Motorola to make its own, better smartphones and tablets.