With its acquisition of Motorola having closed in May, Google is now beginning to its stamp on its acquisition’s future. According to The New York Times, Motorola will lay off about 20% of its workforce, about 4,000 employees, and close about a third of its offices worldwide.
One third of the job losses will come from the US but it areas such as Asia and India and its R&D in Chicago, Sunnyvale and Beijing will also be affected. There are no specific details on the impact of Google’s decision here for Motorola Canada.
Motorola will also cut its device portfolio down to “just a few” devices. In comparison, it launched 27 devices last year. Motorola’s CEO, Dennis Woodside, wants to give a cool factor back Motorola devices by “loading them with things like sensors that recognize who is in a room based on their voices, cameras that take crisper photos and batteries that last for days.”
Many innovations expected to make it into Motorola’s new devices will come from a Google group called “Advanced Technology and Projects.” It is not a large team, numbering only a few dozen people. How this affects the relationship between Google and Motorola and that with other manufacturing partners remains to be seen.
Read more: The New York Times