It’s been a while now since Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility was passed on by the World’s Economies and now, we’re starting to see some real affects of the acquisition. News is now coming from The New York Times that Motorola Mobility plan to cut up to 20 per cent of its workforce – roughly 4,000 people – as part of major restructuring at the company. Of this 20 per cent cut a third is coming from the firm’s US operations, following on from an earlier reshuffle that resulted in the loss of 40 per cent of its Vice Presidents. These cuts will include a curbing of R&D spending in Sunnyvale, Chicago and Beijing as well as a reduction of operations in India and Asia.
The question many of you are asking is; what will these cuts accomplish? Well, Dennis Woodside, the company’s new CEO told the Times that the restructure is intended to gear Motorola to less low-end phones and to knuckle down to make “a few cellphones instead of dozens”. Woodside, who was implemented by Google shortly after the deal was approved, wants the company to be recognised for voice recognition capable of detecting who is in the room as well as making devices with batter cameras and something that we all need, better batteries. Of course, the voice recognition comment from Woodside is interesting, especially after Google launched Google Now and a revamped voice engine at this year’s I/O conference.
The brief interview led on to the gap between Motorola and Google with Woodside reinforcing the idea that the two will stay separate entities by expressing that Google benefits from having a large group of Android partners. Which is pretty clear to be the case because the more OEMs you have churning out Android devices, the more consumers end up running Android which, is all that Google wants.
It’s hard to say what this new restructuring will bring but, if anything, it sounds like a step in the right direction.
[Source: The Verge]