Google on Monday said it plans to lay off about 4,000 employees at Motorola, a cellphone maker it purchased in May, in order to return the company to profitability.
"While we expect this strategy to create new opportunities and help return Motorola's mobile devices unit to profitability, we understand how hard these changes will be for the employees concerned," a company spokesperson told AFP.
According to The New York Times, the reorganization plan calls for laying off about 20% of Motorola's workforce and closing a third of its 94 offices worldwide.
About two-thirds of the affected 4,000 jobs will be lost outside of the United States, according to the report.
The company plans to leave unprofitable markets, stop making low-end devices and reduce the number of cellphone models it is producing, the newspaper said.
Motorola will reduce its operations in Asia and India, and center R&D in Chicago, Sunnyvale, Calif., and Beijing.
The Google spokesperson said the company will help those affected by the job cuts.
"Motorola is committed to helping them through this difficult transition and will be providing generous severance packages, as well as outplacement services to help people find new jobs," the spokesperson said.
Google already has reorganized Motorola's management team, letting cutting 40% of its vice presidents, The New York Times said.
Taking a Bite Out of Apple
Motorola Mobility was created in 2011 when U.S.-based Motorola Inc. split the company into a mobile-devices unit and a government and public safety division known as Motorola Solutions.
The $12.5 billion acquisition put the Internet giant in head-to-head competition with Apple.
Google said it will run Motorola Mobility as a separate business unit that will be a licensee of Android, the Google operating system for mobile devices.
With the purchase, Google acquired 17,000 patents. It has been strengthening its patent portfolio in the fight for dominance in the booming smartphone and tablet market.
The Android system snagged 51% of the U.S. mobile-phone operating-system market in the three months ending in March, according to comScore, while Apple's operating system had 30.7%.
Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2012
