Worldwide Sony Ericsson re-org hits US

By Tim Conneally, BetaNews

September 30, 2008, 12:59 PM

Sony Ericsson will lay off over half of the employees of its research facility in Research Triangle Park just outside of Durham, North Carolina. The cutback is a part of a wider re-structuring taking place at the joint mobile phone company.

Of the nearly 750 workers at Sony Ericsson's research and development center, some 450 will be put out. The company said the cut of approximately 2,000 jobs worldwide would represent a savings of €300 million.

The company announced large-scale structuring changes in July, precipitated by the economic slump that the company foresaw last March. President Dick Komiyama said at the time that the company was looking to diversify its income rather than continue its reliance on the mid- to high-end replacement sector.

In its statement yesterday, Sony Ericsson said (in third person) that "market conditions have changed very rapidly and action must be taken to ensure that it can remain competitive in the dynamic and fast-paced telecommunications industry...The measures that are being taken by Sony Ericsson are aimed at becoming a faster, more agile and more cost efficient organisation. "

Early in the Summer this year, Sony Ericsson underwent several changes that could point to the company's future moves. As evidenced by a press release last March, the company's UIQ user interface, which was a joint project with Motorola, was enveloped by the Symbian Foundation. Motorola and Sony Ericsson were also both members of the WiMAX forum. Though there has been scant word on Sony Ericsson's progress in the WiMAX field since that time (the company has also laid out plans for LTE), industry interest in the standard is being spurred by the decreasing cost of WiMAX technology, such as the chipsets provided by Motorola.