Motorola Mobility will scale down its staff strength in India in line with the announcement from its headquarters in California.
Search engine giant Google had bought Motorola’s handset division in May for $12.5 billion and since then has worked to reshape its business. In India, Motorola Mobility, with head office in Gurgaon, has around 300 people.
The handset maker on Sunday told its employees that it would lay off 20 per cent (around 4,000 people) of its workforce and close a third of its 94 offices worldwide.
When contacted, Google India’s spokesperson told
“Motorola is committed to helping the employees through this difficult transition and will be providing generous severance packages, as well as outplacement services to help people find new jobs,” the spokesperson added.
However, the company declined to comment on numbers, as it would be decided by the headquarters. But the spokesperson said certainly the ‘numbers will go down in India as well’.
Google bought Motorola to use its more than 17,000 patents that could help the company in challenges to the Android operating system. It also plans to use Motorola’s expertise in making its own smartphones and other mobile devices.
A Motorola spokesperson in May told this newspaper that ‘Motorola has a long-standing presence in India and the Asia-Pacific region, and that will continue. Mobility is owned by Google but will keep its operations separate’.
However, Motorola Mobility’s financial performance will be broken out as part of Google’s quarterly results; the spokesperson had said, adding that Motorola will remain a licensee of Google Android.