450 Irish jobs at risk as Dell cuts global workforce

Up to 450 jobs may be lost in Ireland as computer giant Dell plans to cut up to 10% of its global workforce in the next 12 months.

It will be several months before full details of the cutbacks are known, but Dell in Ireland is expected to make an annoucement today and to brief its staff shortly on any changes that will affect them.

The Irish operation employs 3,000 people in Limerick and 1,500 in Dublin and was second in the IDA's top 25 employers in 2006.

In all, the US computer maker will shed more than 8,000 jobs worldwide over the next year as part of restructuring.

Earlier this year, mobile phone manufacturer Motorola announced plans to cut 300 jobs at its Cork plant.

The redundancies, which represent 10% of Dell’s global work force of 88,100 full time and part-time employees, comes as the company struggles to regain market share after Hewlett-Packard ousted it from the top spot in worldwide computer shipments last year.

In the first quarter, HP kept its lead over Dell with about 4% more shipments, according to tech research firms IDC and Gartner.

The jobs announcement came after Dell announced a slight dip in earnings for the first quarter of the year.

The company said it earned $759m (€564m), or US34c per share, in the three months ended May 4. That compared with $762m (€567m) or US33c per share, in the same period last year.