Sony Ericsson will close its current North American headquarters as part of a broader effort to eliminate 2,000 jobs and cut costs.
Karen Morris, Sony Ericsson's vice president of marketing for North America, told FierceWireless that the company will be closing facilities in Research Triangle Park, N.C., the company's Latin America regional headquarters in Miami, and sites in Kista, Sweden and Chennai, India. She said employees will either be relocated or offered severance packages, and that the move was "part of the business transformation project that we announced in April 2009 to cut costs globally." In April, Sony Ericsson announced plans to cut 2,000 jobs in a bid to return to profitability, but did not provide details at the time.
Morris said that Sony Ericsson's headquarters in Research Triangle Park will be shuttered, and that the struggling handset maker will combine its Latin America and North America regions into a single Americas region, which will be headquartered in Atlanta. She also said that the company would now have four R&D sites around the world: one in Redwood Shores, Calif., and others in Beijing, Tokyo and Lund, Sweden. Research and development employees affected by the closure of the facility in Research Triangle Park will either relocate to Redwood Shores, which is near San Francisco, or be given severance packages, Morris said.
Sony Ericsson, the world's fifth largest handset maker by volume, is reeling from five straight quarterly losses, though it expects to return to profitability next year, according to CEO Bert Nordberg. The company expects to launch a revamped smartphone strategy and new cost-cutting measures to attain the goal.
For more:
- see this Triangle Business Journal article
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