Research In Motion will reportedly lay off at least 2,000 workers as the company struggles to regain its footing in a smartphone market dominated by just two vendors. RIM added two new executives earlier this month, chief marketing officer Frank Boulben and chief operating officer Kristian Tear, but the Waterloo, Ontario-based smartphone maker is now preparing to make more drastic moves in an effort to cut costs, The Globe and Mail reported. The restructuring may begin in the next two weeks according to the ...

Sony on Thursday confirmed earlier rumors suggesting plans to release 10,000 workers during the course of fiscal 2012. The figure includes employees expected to leave Sony as part of various business sales, however. The move, which is part of a larger effort to restructure and cut costs, will result in a 6% workforce reduction. The Japan-based consumer electronics giant has been in decline for years, and the company said earlier this week that it will report a worst-ever $6.4 billion loss when it posts its f...

Sony will reportedly cut 10,000 jobs, or roughly 6% of its global workforce, in an effort to bring the electronics giant back to profit, Nikkei reported on Monday. The majority of the layoffs will apparently come from consolidating the company’s chemicals and small and mid-size LCD operations, and are expected to be made over the next two years.  The report claims Sony’s new CEO Kazuo Hirai will announce his restructuring plan on April 12th, and the company may also ask seven executive direct...

Yahoo on Wednesday confirmed plans to lay off more than 2,000 employees as part of new cost-cutting efforts. The Internet giant currently employs approximately 14,000 full-time workers and several thousand more contractors. The workforce reductions will be spread across a number of units within Yahoo including its product division, local business unit, marketing division and research and development division. “Today’s actions are an important next step toward a bold, new Yahoo! — smaller, nimbler, m...

T-Mobile is looking to restructure the company and in doing so, it will cut 5% of its workforce and closing seven call centers over the next three months, The Wall Street Journal reports. The carrier said the job cuts were necessary and will help fund its planned $4 billon 4G LTE network. As both Verizon and AT&T continue to add subscribers, T-Mobile shed 1.7 million customers last year alone. “The customer base is less and the call volume is lower,” said Cara Walker, a spokeswoman for the car...

Nokia on Thursday announced that it will cut as many as 1,000 jobs at its plant in Salo, Finland. The company’s layoffs will happen gradually through 2012, with most cuts happening by the end of June, Reuters reported. The Salo plant is the last large cell phone manufacturing plant in Western Europe, as most businesses have moved their manufacturing to Asia. Last month, Nokia shed 2,300 workers from a plant in Komarom, Hungary and 700 others in Reynosa, Mexico as it too shifted much of its manufactur...

Approximately 3,000 people could lose their jobs following the shuttering of Verizon call centers in Texas, Michigan and Washington state. Local ABC affiliate ABC 13 reported on Thursday that up to 1,000 workers may be released as Verizon moves its call center out of the Houston, Texas region. Verizon will close call centers in Michigan and Washington as well, impacting a total of about 3,000 workers. It is unclear if the carrier intends to open new call centers to replace the shuttered facilities, or if it ...

LightSquared announced on Tuesday that the company plans to cut its workforce by 45% in an effort to cut costs. ”This and other cost savings measures will allow LightSquared to continue to navigate the regulatory process as it works with the appropriate government agencies to find solutions to the GPS interference issue and bring its $14 billion privately funded wireless broadband network to more than 260 million Americans,” the company said in a statement to Reuters. Last week, the FCC announ...

Nokia plans to eliminate 4,000 jobs as part of a major cost-cutting effort that will see much of its manufacturing shift to Asia. The cuts will be made across three Nokia plants — 2,300 workers will be shed in Komarom, Hungary, 700 will lose their jobs in Reynosa, Mexico and 1,000 more in Salo, Finland will be laid off. Each of the three plants will continue to operate at reduced capacities, and the move is part of a larger effort to cut costs following the €1 billion loss Nokia reported last quarter. &...

Yahoo has frozen its hiring process and may even consider layoffs according to a new report. The news was revealed by AllThingsD on Thursday, which wrote that the choices were made ahead of expected weak fourth quarter earnings. Yahoo isn’t considering mass layoffs, however; instead, AllThingsD said they are likely to be “small and selective” if they happen at all. Yahoo experienced a bit of turmoil earlier this week when co-founder, former CEO and board member Jerry Yang resigned from the c...

After Nokia and Siemens failed to sell Nokia Siemens Networks, the joint venture announced on Wednesday that it will cut 17,000 jobs around the globe by 2013 as part of a restructuring move that will focus on services and mobile broadband. “Our goal is to provide the world’s most efficient mobile networks, the intelligence to maximize the value of those networks, and the services capability to make it all work seamlessly,” Nokia Siemens CEO Rajeev Suri said. “Despite the need to restructur...

Motorola Mobility will spend $31 million as it lays off 800 employees ahead of its planned acquisition by Google, Bloomberg reported on Monday. Motorola said in a regulatory filing that it would spend $27 million in employee severance and an additional $4 million closing a number of existing facilities. “Motorola Mobility continues to focus on improving its financial performance by taking actions to manage the company’s costs,” company spokeswoman Jennifer Weyrauch-Erickson told Bloomberg. Goog...

HP said earlier this year that it was planning to kill off its webOS hardware business, and reports suggested it was planning to sell the division to another company or that it might use the mobile operating system for smaller side projects. The Guardian reported on Friday that HP may kill off the division entirely and terminate as many as 500 employees who work with webOS. “There’s a 95% chance we all get laid off between now and November, and I for one am thinking it’s for the best,”...

Nokia announced on Thursday that it will “continue to align its workforce and operations” by reducing its headcount by roughly 3,500 workers. This new round of personnel reductions is in addition to earlier cuts announced this past April, and it will take effect by the end of next year. Approximately 2,200 of the laid off workers will come from the closure of Nokia’s factory in Cluj, Romania, which began operations in 2008, and another 1,300 cuts will take place within the company’s Lo...