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Google Cutting 4,000 Jobs At Motorola; 1,300 Of Them Are In U.S.

Motorola's Droid Razr Maxx.
David Becker
/
Getty Images
Motorola's Droid Razr Maxx.

Google is eliminating about 20 percent of the jobs at Motorola Mobility, the struggling cellphone manufacturer it finished acquiring earlier this year for $12.5 billion, according to reports from The New York Times, Dow Jones' All Things Digital blog and other news outlets.

About 4,000 positions will be eliminated. One-third of the cuts, around 1,300 jobs, will be at U.S. operations.

Dennis Woodside, Motorola's chief executive, tells the Times that the company is still "excited about the smartphone business."

Google acquired Motorola Mobility in large part to get the cellphone maker's more than 17,000 technology patents.

According to the Times, the company "will shrink operations in Asia and India, and center research and development in Chicago, Sunnyvale and Beijing ... [and] cut the number of devices Motorola makes from the 27 it introduced last year to just a few."

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Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.