Motorola said today it will cut 7,000 jobs, or 5 per cent of its work force, as it struggles to strengthen its mobile phone unit in a slowing sales environment that recently led rival Ericsson to issue a profit warning.
It will complete the job cuts in the next two quarters and take a charge against its first half results. Motorola's shares were up less than 1 per cent, or 5 cents, at $15.05 a share in trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
Over the past year, the stock has underperformed the Standard & Poor's 500 Index by about 70 per cent.
Motorola - which issued its own profit warning last month - said the job cuts raise the total in its mobile phone business so far this year to 12,000, or 36 per cent of the unit's total employees at the end of last year.
In December 2000 Motorola laid off 750 workers in Dublin in the single largest redundancy announcement in the State for almost four years.