More Job Cuts at Motorola Mobility

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Motorola Mobility plans to cut another 10 percent of its work force, about 1,200 jobs, according to a Wall Street Journal story based on a company email.

That’s in addition to the 4,000 job cuts that Google made last fall after acquiring the company for $12.5 billion.

The email said in part, “While we’re very optimistic about the new products in our pipeline, we still face challenges. Our costs are too high, we’re operating in markets where we’re not competitive and we’re losing money,” Reuters quotes the WSJ story, which is behind a paywall.

Those losses have totaled $1.1 billion since Google bought the company last May, The Associated Press reports.

Google’s plans for the company include a tighter focus on smartphones rather than lower-end phones. The jobs will be eliminated in the United States, India and China, though it’s not clear how many will be U.S. positions.

At the end of December, Google reported a headcount of 16,317 at Motorola Mobility — 11,113 in Motorola Mobile and 5,204 in Motorola Home, a division that makes TV set-top boxes. It has agreed to sell the Home unit to Arris Group for $2.35 billion, so those jobs probably will not be affected by the cuts.

The WSJ also reported that the company has suspended operations at a plant near Chennai, India, a move that affects 76 jobs, according to Multichannel News.

A third of the previous round of cuts were to be in the United States, including about 700 in the Chicago area, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Last summer, Motorola Mobility signed a 15-year lease on 600,000 square feet in Chicago’s Merchandise Mart, citing plans to move its 3,000 employees (at the time) to new offices downtown from suburban Libertyville.

Meanwhile, Apple has asked a federal appeals court to reinstate its patent-infringement claims against Motorola Mobility based on touchscreen technology, Bloomberg reports.