Sony Mobile moving HQ to Tokyo, cutting 1,000 jobs in Sweden

Sony Mobile moving HQ to Tokyo, cutting 1,000 jobs in Sweden

Sony's slow and painful transformation continues with a restructuring of its newly-minted mobile division. In October, it's moving its headquarters from Lund, Sweden (presumably a holdover from its Ericsson days) to Tokyo -- for deeper integration -- and repurposing the duties of its facilities in Tokyo, Lund and Beijing. As part of the changes, Sony Mobile will slash 15 percent of its workforce, with 1,000 employees being let go by the end of March 2014, in a trend we've seen across the industry. Most of those affected are in Sweden, with 650 on-site staffers and up to 450 consultants being shown the door.

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Sony Mobile moving HQ to Tokyo, cutting 1,000 jobs in Sweden originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 23 Aug 2012 03:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nokia’s Q2 2012 financials: 4 million Lumias sold, $1.01 billion dollar loss

STUB Nokia's Q2 2012 announced

The past three months haven't been the best for Finland's former world number one. It hasn't been helped by the three biggest credit agencies lowering the company's bond rating to "junk," and the Lumia 900's violently slashed price. Unfortunately the latest results reveal continuing gloom: the manufacturer made an operating loss of $1.01 billion dollars for the quarter. The company managed to make €7.5 billion in sales ($9.2 billion, down .5 billion since the last quarter), shifting four million Lumia handsets in the process. In fact, the only cause for optimism is that sales of the Lumia range have roughly doubled each quarter.

The number of handsets pushed out the door increased (thanks to the Asha range of budget phones) with the company selling 73 million phones. That said, the company has clearly failed to crack America, selling a paltry 600,000 handsets in the States. The cash pile has also continued to dwindle, with the piggybank currently standing at €4.1 billion ($5.1 billion), down from $6.3 billion in Q1, despite getting a further $250 million in kickbacks from Microsoft. Unsurprisingly, the prediction for the third quarter of the year was similarly dour, summed up rather euphemistically as "difficult."

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Nokia's Q2 2012 financials: 4 million Lumias sold, $1.01 billion dollar loss originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 Jul 2012 06:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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RIM announces Q1 earnings: $518 million net loss, 5,000 job cuts, BB10 not due until Q1 2013

The last quarter has been about as rough as they come for RIM, and it's now detailed just how things stacked up in terms of hard numbers. For the first quarter of its 2013 fiscal year, the company brought in $2.8 billion in revenue, down a full 33 percent from the prior quarter, while it reported a net loss of $518 million -- much worse than analysts were expecting. What's more, it's also announced that it's cutting an additional 5,000 jobs as part of its ongoing restructuring efforts, and that the first BlackBerry 10 smartphones now won't launch until sometime in the first quarter of the 2013 calendar year (that includes a QWERTY model launched in "close proximity" to the touchscreen-only device). As for why, RIM only went as far as to say that the integration of some key BlackBerry 10 features and the "associated large volume of code" has "proven to be more time consuming than anticipated." For his part, though, CEO Thorsten Heins says he remains "confident that the first BlackBerry 10 smartphones will provide a ground-breaking next generation smartphone user experience," and that he's "encouraged by the traction that the BlackBerry 10 platform is gaining with application developers and content partners." He further notes that the response to BB10 from key carrier partners has "been very positive."

In terms of its existing devices, RIM reports that BlackBerry smartphone shipments (not sales) for the quarter totaled 7.8 million, while there were about 260,000 PlayBooks shipped -- on the company's earnings call, Heins noted that the total BlackBerry subscriber base now stands at 78 million. Not surprisingly, the company is warning of more bad news to come. It says it expects the "next several quarters to continue to be very challenging," with everything from the "increasing competitive environment," lower handset volumes, impact from the BlackBerry 10 delay, and the company's plans to "continue to aggressively drive sales of BlackBerry 7 handheld devices" expected to cut into its bottom line. In another bit of news, the company also announced that it has appointed Steve Zipperstein, Verizon's former General Counsel, as its new Chief Legal Officer. You can find the full earnings report at the source link below.

RIM announces Q1 earnings: $518 million net loss, 5,000 job cuts, BB10 not due until Q1 2013 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 28 Jun 2012 16:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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RIM may cut 2,000-plus jobs within two weeks

RIM may cut 2,000-plus jobs within two weeks

RIM's current chief Thorsten Heins has had to make some tough decisions in the first few months of his tenure -- and he could be making some particularly difficult choices about trimming the rank and file within the next two weeks. Assuming we take the claims of several contacts for Canada's The Globe and Mail at face value, "at least" 2,000 jobs are being cut on or before June 1st. The numbers could climb higher at that: Reuters is bracing for as many as 6,000 layoffs, and has described an unhappy routine of "Goodbye Thursdays" where more recent hires are let go. RIM has turned down comment on what it calls "rumors and speculation," and we'd hope for the sake of those possibly affected that it's not true. Having said this, it's hard not to imagine Heins wanting to streamline the BlackBerry maker as much as possible to adapt to shrinking market share and keep the company afloat until BlackBerry 10 potentially spurs a revival.

RIM may cut 2,000-plus jobs within two weeks originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 26 May 2012 13:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HP cuts 27,000 jobs, profit tumbles 31 percent in Q2

Meg Whitman and Todd Bradley in Shanghai

Looks like rumors of major cost-cutting measures at HP are true: the company along with its fiscal Q2 results has just outlined plans to slash 27,000 jobs by the end of its fiscal 2014. The drop, or about eight percent of its workforce, is being offered an "early retirement" if it doesn't want to wait to be let go involuntarily. The move is intended to streamline HP's operations and save between $3 billion to $3.5 billion a year by the time the cuts are done. As for the results themselves, they explain all too clearly why the cuts are inbound: HP 's profit dropped a massive 31 percent to $1.6 billion, and its revenue dropped three points to $30.7 billion. CEO Meg Whitman touted the results as exceeding an earlier glum outlook, but with the enterprise, printer and services groups all dragging the company down, it's clear that HP is in the same boat as a struggling Dell.

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HP cuts 27,000 jobs, profit tumbles 31 percent in Q2 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 23 May 2012 16:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HP will reportedly announce restructuring plan next week, up to 30,000 job cuts

It looks like HP could be in store for another wave of big changes. According to a pair of reports out today (backing up a report from Business Insider yesterday), HP CEO Meg Whitman will announce a new restructuring plan on the company's earnings call next Wednesday -- a plan that will entail some significant job cuts. Bloomberg pegs those cuts in the neighborhood of 25,000, while All Things D says they could include as many as 30,000 jobs, noting also that the number is still a "moving target." To put that in perspective, the company currently employs some 320,000 people worldwide. Of those cuts, 10 to 15,000 are said to come from HP's enterprise services group, and the company is also said to be offering early retirement packages to some 5,000 employees. That restructuring plan will apparently include more than just job cuts, though, with Whitman said to be pushing a "cut and reinvest" approach that will apply across the company, according to ATD.

HP will reportedly announce restructuring plan next week, up to 30,000 job cuts originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 17 May 2012 15:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ST-Ericsson to pass off application processor business to STM, cut 1,700 jobs

ST-Ericsson to pass off application processor business to STM, cut 1,700 jobsIt's not every day that ST-Ericsson crosses our radar twice, but in addition to reportedly signing a deal with HTC for developing low-end handset chips, the company just announced its plans for a turnaround. The message? A heavier focus on SoCs for smartphones and tablets, along with a push for even more partnerships to develop those products. While that all sounds rosy, ST-Ericsson is also ceding its application processor business -- employees, R&D and all -- to STMicroelectronics. All told, between the loss of its application processor business and other reshuffling, the company expects to shed around 1,700 jobs -- and save about $320 million annually. Those bittersweet details and more await you in the press release after the break.

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ST-Ericsson to pass off application processor business to STM, cut 1,700 jobs originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 23 Apr 2012 22:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sony to cut 10,000 jobs and slash bonuses, says Japanese newspaper

Sony to cut 10,000 jobs and reduce bonuses, says Japanese newspaperThere have been some major adjustments at Sony HQ already, but Japanese business sheet Nikkei reckons they're nothing compared to what's on the horizon. It reports that, come an announcement on April 12th, Kaz Hirai will reveal plans to clear out 10,000 jobs by the end of this year -- that's six percent of his workforce. The paper also says that seven execs, including chairman Howard Stringer, could be asked to forgo their bonuses, as the company concedes a $3.2 billion loss for 2011. It's a just a single report and it's entirely possible that none of this will happen, but merely the hint of such austerity could perhaps serve Hirai's interests, even if he ends up being less drastic when Thursday comes around.

Sony to cut 10,000 jobs and slash bonuses, says Japanese newspaper originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 09 Apr 2012 04:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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