Motorola to cut 3,000 jobs in reaction to sagging sales

MOTOROLA, the world’s second-biggest mobile-phone maker, will cut another 3,000 jobs this year to help counter sagging sales of equipment for cellular networks and cable television.

However, industry sources here indicate that none of the 650 people employed by Motorola should be in the firing line.

The company employs 550 people at its Global Telecoms Solutions Sector programming centre at Mahon in Cork, 40 people at the Cork Airport Business Park where the Wireless and Broadband Systems group developed and brought the world's first GPRS transceivers into production, and 60 in Dublin.

The reductions, about 3.2% of the workforce, will bring Motorola’s job cuts to about 60,000 since mid-2000. The company will have 90,000 employees by year’s end, chief financial officer David Devonshire said on a conference call.

Motorola yesterday reduced its forecast for industry-wide sales of wireless phones to 430 million from as much as 440 million, partly blaming the war in Iraq. Motorola yesterday pared its 2003 revenue and profit forecasts because of lower-than-expected mobile-phone sales and reduced orders at the set-top box and wireless-networking equipment divisions.

The lower forecasts are “the result of the slow pace of the global economic recovery,’ Motorola chief operating officer Mike Zafirovski said.