Motorola cuts jobs in Japan, Texas

TOKYO, Japan -- Motorola Inc. confirmed it is shedding as many as 1,300 jobs at its chip plants in Sendai, Japan, and in Austin, Texas.

The cuts will come over the next nine to 15 months. They are part of an overall restructuring involving 4,000 lost jobs, that the Illinois-based company had already announced.

But it had not identified where the jobs would go.

In Sendai, the company will scrap its end-manufacturing operation, which employs 230. It will keep a chip-design operation there.

But It will also close the chip-fabrication and final-manufacturing operations of its Tohoku Semiconductors Co. unit in Sendai, a coastal city some 150 miles (242 kms) north of Tokyo.

Cutting one-third of its jobs worldwide

The shuttering follows Motorola's move on Monday to cut 700 to 800 jobs in Hong Kong, shifting chip production and testing to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Tianjin, China.

In Austin, the capital of Texas, Motorola will close a chip-testing and assembly operation.

Motorola is moving the Sendai and Austin responsibilities to factories in Arizona and Scotland.

The company is the world's second largest maker of mobile phones, after Nokia. Its chip operations generate around 20 percent of its sales.

It has recently been shifting into broadband and cable products.

All told, Motorola is shedding around a third of its work force worldwide, eliminating almost 50,000 jobs, including 9,400 in the United States alone.