Google is laying off 10% of Motorola Mobility’s mobile devices workforce -- shedding about 1,200 employees -- but the reductions do not affect the Motorola Home unit, which is in the process of being acquired by Arris Group.
The layoffs, reported by The Wall Street Journal Friday and confirmed by Google, “are a continuation of the reductions we announced last summer,” Google said in a statement.
As of Dec. 31, 2012, Google said there were 16,317 total Motorola Mobility employees: 11,113 in Motorola Mobile and 5,204 in Motorola Home. Last August, Google said it would lay off about 20% of Motorola Mobility's entire workforce, eliminating about 4,000 jobs across both the mobile devices and Home divisions.
In December, Arris announced an agreement with Google to acquire the cable-focused Motorola Home group for $2.35 billion, a deal that would more than triple Arris’s size. The deal is expected to close by the second quarter of 2013, pending regulatory approvals.
According to the Journal, Google said in an internal email announcing the Motorola layoffs that "our costs are too high, we're operating in markets where we're not competitive and we're losing money." The cuts will affect workers in the U.S., China and India, the paper reported.
The Journal also reported Friday that Motorola Mobility’s mobile devices group suspended operations at its manufacturing facility in India and cut 76 jobs there as part of its global cost-reduction program.
