Sprint, Motorola, Nortel & Kodak Plan Major Cutbacks – In People

Kodak: 30,000

From Ben Dobbin, AP Business Writer writes an interesting article about Kodak. They are adding an additional 3,000 layoffs to the previously announced 27,000 planned for this year. That comes on the heals of 23,000 already sent packing.

At its peak in 1988 Kodak employed 145,000 and after the cuts planned for 2007 will employ 29,000. At the end of these cuts Kodak will have shrunk by 80%.

Sprint: 5,000

This is a different story, in an InformationWeek story by Elena Malykhina Sprint plans to cut 5,000 of its staff. As quoted by Ms. Malykhina:

“Sprint is the most ambitious of the four major U.S. cellular carriers, acquiring Nextel for $35 billion and making bets on emerging technologies like WiMax. But with costs up, customers unhappy, and layoffs imminent, the No. 3 U.S. cellular carrier may have taken on more than it can handle.”

The recent breakout of the video blogging and pod casts, has caused carriers to throw out any previous projections concerning bandwidth requirements. With the consumer now demanding substantially more bandwidth networks have to be reworked before they are even finished. From an article in The Guardian titled Rise of video downloads threatens gridlock on net:

"The growth in video downloads could create an internet traffic jam that threatens the net's development, according to Google."

Motorola: 3,500

Motorola has announced layoffs of 3,500 after having a record breaking 4th quarter where sales of handsets rose 47%. Unfortunately profits went the other way by 48%. Motorola does so many different things and has been on a buying spree lately that the poor results have to be answered somewhere, or by 3,500 some ones.

Nortel: 2,900

Nortel, a Canadian Company with a 2,600 worker plant in the Research Triangle Park of the Raleigh/Durham, area has announced layoffs of 2,900. The specific locations of the proposed layoffs weren’t given but the company has indicated plans to cut spending in the R& D and administration areas.