Recently, Motorola Mobility has been attempting to “reboot” themselves after being acquired by Google. To start the reboot, Motorola Mobility has announced that they will be laying off 20 percent of their global workforce and closing a third of their 94 offices. Motorola has said that they will be focusing on their offices in Chicago (yay!), Hong Kong and Sunnyvale. Motorola has started this transition by moving their main Chicago offices from their old building in Schaumburg, Illinois, to Merchandise Mart, an office building, shopping center and expo hall in the middle of the Chicago loop. This move alone shows that Motorola wants to downsize by not only laying off employees, but by downsizing their offices in general by moving to a shared office space. In the end, this move will save Motorola a ton of money as they no longer have to maintain their own office building. This move also brings Google and Motorola closer together as Google’s Chicago offices are very close to Merchandise Mart.
While these reboot plans may seem a little harsh to some, I think that this is a good way for Motorola Mobility to get on the right track. If Motorola can downsize enough they can focus their time, energy and money on creating great hardware and not unnecessary products like the “LapDock”. However, we do wish those that were laid off at Motorola the best of luck finding new employment.
Source: New York Times via AllThingsD via Engadget
Image Credit: edans
