It’s time for some spring cleaning again at Motorola, and Google has announced that another 1,200 people will be laid off, after they laid off another 4,000 last fall. This is about 10% of their current workforce, and Google might not stop there, as Motorola is not doing very well financially. In fact it’s losing money, because as Google says, their costs are too high, and they aren’t very competitive in the markets right now. Google hopes however, that they can ease this transition time for their Motorola workers:
“These cuts are a continuation of the reductions we announced last summer,” the company said. “It’s obviously very hard for the employees concerned, and we are committed to helping them through this difficult transition.”
Morale wise, Motorola employees must not be doing so well right now when some of them are getting laid off, but it’s for the good of the company in the long term. Plus, as Google has stated before, the average competence of a Motorola employee is lower than of the average Googler, so they will want to keep only the best people there. Since Motorola is not doing great financially right now, this is a pretty good time to raise the quality of Motorola employees. When Motorola will start growing again, they can start hiring new, better qualified employees.
Unfortunately, we probably won’t see that happening for the time being, as Google CFO himself said that we shouldn’t be expecting any devices that “wow” us from Motorola anytime soon. The old pipeline of Motorola products hasn’t been fully shipped yet, so we’re still going to see Motorola devices that haven’t had a very large influence from Google. That means that Motorola also won’t experience a lot of sales that sustain the rest of its employees, which means we’ll probably see even more lay offs from Motorola.
I think Motorola will only be saved if Google shows us some Chromebook Pixel-quality devices from Motorola, perhaps the rumored X phone and tablet, which we have no idea when they will arrive maybe. It could happen by the end of the year for the holiday season or in the first half of next year. Every month until that happens Motorola is going to lose Google money, but if those products can live up to the hype, then it should at least kick-start the process of getting Motorola on a growth path again.
[Via Cnet]