Further to its disastrous second quarter, Motorola Inc says it will reorganize both its communications and semiconductor divisions. It says it will shed some older semiconductor products and that its main focus will be PowerPC, which it claims is now the telecommunications industry’s CPU of choice. Motorola may sell-off sections of the businesses as part of the reorganizations which are to be announced next month. The company claims its PowerPC business is profitable and says that what it has seen of analysts’ estimates for next year’s semiconductor market are very optimistic compared with its own expectations. Semiconductor sales for networking applications are strong but there’s no real demand for its products for use in consumer electronics devices, it says. Industry reports suggest Motorola will try and kickstart this business with set-top digital entertainment technology code-named Blackbird. 40% of the $1.95bn charge it is taking to eliminate 15,000 jobs will be spent consolidating and closing facilities. 30% will be accounted for by exiting certain unamed businesses.
