Motorola Lays Off 1,000 in China

Motorola is reported to have cut 1,000 jobs from its Chinese R&D facility, leaving only about 100 employees at its Wangjing offices. The company hasn't confirmed the number of employees that were laid off, although a spokesperson for Motorola announced that there had been job cuts.

The spokesperson noted that, “According to Motorola's financial results for the fourth quarter of last year, the company dismissed 4,000 employees worldwide, including 3,000 employees from the mobile phone unit. But that is a global figure, and we do not have specific figures for China and other regions.”

The company's official continued by saying that “Motorola China has offered compensation to employees in accordance with Chinese laws and regulations.” The spokesperson also noted that Motorola was still committed to the development of China and that the strategic role of the Chinese market would not change even if the company had operated job cuts in the country.

This wave of job cuts is the second one Motorola operates in China in the past four months. At the end of last year, the company laid off 600 employees out of 2,600 from Motorola China's research and development team. During the first downsizing, most of the employees were outsourced technicians, only that this time the people receiving the pink slip were formal Motorola employees.

The new layoffs didn't surprise many of the company's employees, since Motorola announced earlier this month that it planned to cut around 4,000 jobs worldwide, while three quarters of them would be from the mobile devices unit. For what it's worth, the layoffs were made only after the Spring Festival holiday, which followed close to the initial announcement.

“I saw many former colleagues leaving the company with an envelope in their hands, looking pale,” a Motorola China employee said. “The company dismissed nearly 1,000 people this time,” he continued. “They were all from the research and development team of the mobile phone department and the software platform project team suffered the most during the layoffs.”