Motorola Mobility Streamlines Further: Leaving South Korea; 540+ Folks to be Laid Off

[dgstorm]

When Google said they were going to start streamlining Motorola to make it leaner and meaner, they weren't exaggerating. Sometimes you have to make the tough decisions to move out of areas where your ROI is damaging, and that is what Google has done with Motorola Mobility in South Korea. They will be leaving the South Korean market that is completely dominated by Samsung and LG currently. By closing down their Korean operations they will unfortunately have to layoff most of their workforce there. That amounts to over 540 folks who will need to find other work. Motorola shared they will be offering relocation packages to about 10% of their Research and Development Unit folks from there. Here's a quote with their statement,

On December 10th, we began communicating to staff in Korea our plans to close most of our operations in Korea, including our research and development and consumer mobile device marketing organization. The changes in Korea reflect our plans to consolidate our global R&D efforts to foster collaboration, and to focus more attention on markets where we are best positioned to compete effectively.

Our Home business and iDEN go-to-market operations will continue operating in Korea. We will also continue to provide customer service and warranty support for mobile devices that have been sold in Korea.

This was a difficult but necessary decision. We are very proud of the work done by our talented teams in Korea, and the many contributions they have made to our business over the years. We will offer relocation to about 10 percent of our R&D staff there. For other employees we will strive to make the transition as smooth as possible.

We are grateful for the support of our customers in Korea.

While this will be some bad news for folks in Korean, the good news is that Moto is growing more powerful. Who knows, maybe all this restructuring will lead to something really big from the Motorola camp next year... maybe a Motorola Nexus device perhaps?

Source: TheNextWeb