Motorola Mobility to lose 20% of its workforce
Jeremy Hobson: Google announced this morning it will lay off 4,000 people. They’re all employees of Motorola Mobility, which Google recently bought. The layoffs account for 20 percent of Motorola Mobility’s workforce.
Marketplace’s Heidi Moore reports.
Heidi Moore: Sometimes, when two companies combine, it’s a story of growing together and building something new. And sometimes, it doesn’t exactly seem like true love.
Henry Blodget: When Google said it was buying Motorola, a lot of people said: “Well, this is just for the patents.”
Henry Blodget is the CEO of Business Insider. He says Google surprised even itself when it shacked up with Motorola.
Blodget: It became clear over the process of closing the deal that Google actually wants to make smartphones and tablets, and as soon as that became clear, the next conclusion was that Google was going to have to restructure Motorola, and that’s what they’re doing.
Many of Motorola’s competitors, including Research in Motion and Nokia, have struggled to keep up. Google hopes it can infuse Motorola’s designs with its own software. We’ll have to see whether it’s a match that will stand the test of time.
In New York, I’m Heidi Moore for Marketplace.
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