Motorola Inc has informed its employees of some of the changes afoot in the semiconductor products sector in a memo dated August 27, which involves folding the Consumer unit of its Semiconductor Products Group into three of the four remaining business units. This is the second major restructuring the semiconductor group has been through in less than eighteen months. This rearrangement seems to indicate that the group has failed in its aims and will mean the loss of potentially 400 jobs in the Hong Kong headquarters and hundreds in Phoenix, Austin and Scotland. According to a Motorola spokesperson, the move will deliver significant cost savings due to a reduction in overheads and duplicated effort, and help the group brave the global semiconductor market. This fits into line with Motorola’s CEO Christopher Galvin’s aims. Since his appointment on January 1, 1997 he has repeatedly stressed that Motorola’s overheads are too high in a number of sectors, and that there is duplication of both staff and development projects. Already Galvin has restructured the communications business, attempting to give it a more logical structure and fewer crossovers between the groups. As part of further the cost cutting procedure Motorola is reportedly moving its staff to NT internally and getting its developers off the various Sun, Unix and Mac boxes they currently use.
