Seagate Technology Inc, cutting away the fat amid trying financial times, has announced that it will be reducing its workforce by 10% during the current quarter. The layoffs are part of the storage company’s ongoing struggle to reduce costs and consolidate operations in the face of flagging disk drive sales. Last month, the company announced that it was closing a disk drive plant in Ireland, resulting in the loss of 1,400 jobs (CI No 3,311). It has also put plans for a $225m disk manufacturing plant in Ireland on hold. In addition, Seagate has closed two out of five design centers in the US, consolidated it US media operations and downsized its global sales and marketing operations. All of that has resulted in a charge of a little more than $300m, $250m of which Seagate says it will take in the December quarter, with the balance taken in the current one. In October, Seagate reported a first-quarter net loss of $240.2m on revenue down 8% at $1.9bn, compared to net income of $129.4m, or $0.53 per share, a year ago (CI No 3,270).
