1,000 jobs to be lost as Motorola realigns

By Melanie Coffee
Associated Press

CHICAGO — Motorola Inc. will eliminate 1,000 jobs and take a charge of $50 million for severance benefits as it moves to complete a spinoff of its money-losing semiconductor unit, the company said yesterday.

Analysts said the reductions will help the world's No. 2 cell phone maker fine-tune its operations.

Some of the job cuts are from corporate positions that Motorola officials determined were unnecessary after the company's chip operations began working independently as Freescale Semiconductor Inc., Motorola spokeswoman Jennifer Weyrauch said.

"We're eliminating 1,000 positions around the world to better align our workforce to support seamless mobility and in anticipation of the Freescale Semiconductor separation," she said.

The job cuts, most of which will take place by the end of this week, are in the company's headquarters in Schaumburg, Ill., and elsewhere around the world, Weyrauch said. Motorola employs about 88,000 people worldwide.

Analysts said eliminating 1,000 positions will help streamline the company to be more competitive against Nokia. The Finnish company holds a commanding lead in the world handset market.

Motorola's job cuts include positions in its commercial, government and industrial solutions component, the integrated electronic systems area and broadband communications, the company said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Motorola's spinoff of its semiconductor division — its second largest behind cell phones — is expected to be complete by the end of this year. The unit accounted for $1.5 billion of a $1.8 billion operating loss in 2002.