 "Texas Instruments announces first ever lay off in India")
As part of a global restructuring process, Texas Instruments is laying off 300 to 500 engineers in its Indian arm, the Economic Times reports. Reportedly, this is the first time the company is altering its Indian workforce.
Employees at TI’s Indian units said that between 300 and 500 engineers were being given the pink slip as part of the global restructuring process. Interestingly, it appears the Dallas-based company would be focusing less on making chips used in mobile phones and tablets and more on profitable areas.
Quoting one employee, the report adds, “Texas Instrument has cut down an entire business unit. These are experienced developers with two to five years of experience and some senior managers as well.” Another employee said, “The numbers could reach around 500 since the company is terminating the entire business unit.”
Announces first ever lay off in India
A TI spokesperson has also confirmed that employees were indeed being let go. The spokesperson, however, refused to reveal the actual numbers. Texas Instruments will be laying off roughly 1,700 employees globally, or 5 percent of its workforce. It also hopes to make annualised savings of about $450 million by the end of 2013.
The report cited Narahari KS, Director of Communications at the Indian arm of TI, as saying, “This decision is consistent with TI’s previously outlined intentions to focus its OMAP processors and wireless connectivity solutions on a broader set of embedded applications with long life cycles, instead of its historical focus on the mobile market where large customers are increasingly developing their own custom chips.”
Texas Instruments set up its first development centre in Bangalore in 1985 and employs about 1,500 engineers in the country.
The company has reportedly has been facing competition from Qualcomm in the mobile phone chip arena. Post the global restructuring, the company will lessen its focus in this space. It has been known that popular phone-makers like Samsung have gone on to design and make chips for mobile phones their focus, driving the company to move its research to other, more relevant areas.
Interestingly, Narahari has been quoted by the report as stating that although the global decision will have some impact on Indian employees, there will be opportunities for some employees to be “re-deployed to other divisions within the company."
Texas Instruments is the third-largest manufacturer of semiconductors globally, after Intel and Samsung, and the second largest supplier of processors for mobile phones after Qualcomm. It has roughly $14 billion (Rs 77,000 crore) in revenues.
TI announced in September this year that it would tune down its operations in smartphone and tablet oriented OMAP chips and provide added focus on embedded platforms. Interestingly, several mobile phones use OMAP SoCs, such as the Nokia N9, N90, N91, N92, Motorola Droid, Droid X, and Droid 2.
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