Motorola to cut 7,000 more jobs after bad financial year

CHICAGO -- Slumping tech giant Motorola Inc. said Wednesday it is cutting 7,000 more jobs and confirmed it is headed for a fourth straight money-losing quarter.

The announcement came a day after the cellphone and semiconductor manufacturer reported a $1.4 billion loss for the quarter ended Sept. 30.

Faced with a weakened economy and slower industry growth in worldwide cellphone sales, Motorola already this year had announced 32,000 job cuts to a work force that stood at 147,000 last December.

President and chief operating officer Robert Growney disclosed to analysts in a conference call Wednesday that the Schaumburg, Ill.-based company will now eliminate 4,000 more positions associated with businesses sold and another 3,000 through other cuts and attrition.

That would increase the total cuts to 39,000 and trim the work force to approximately 108,000 by the end of the year -- a reduction of about 26 percent. Growney indicated there could be more.

"Motorola will continue to take appropriate cost-reduction actions," he said.

The company has reported losses totaling $2.70 billion, or $1.23 a share, for the first nine months of 2001.

Executives said they anticipate a loss of 4 cents to 5 cents a share in the fourth quarter -- a slight improvement over the previous two quarters.

Cellphones turn profit

Kicking off an uneasy earnings season for the tech sector, the company said late Tuesday its biggest business, cellphones, had finally returned to profitability and market share had improved two points to 17 percent.

But overall sales sank 22 percent from a year earlier, semiconductor sales tumbled 48 percent and even Motorola's claim of a recovery for cellphones was under question.

Analyst Todd Bernier of Morningstar said the results showed "across-the-board weakness" for Motorola.