Sony Mobile Cuts Workers

Sony Mobile, a small part of the much larger Sony Corp, makers of a wide range of electronic products, has announced cuts to its workforce in Lund. For those of you who are not up on your geography Lund can be found in the southern part of Sweden. The job cuts will impact about 149 workers at that site. That site currently employs about 2,500 people for Sony Mobile so the cut of 149 is actually a loss of less than seven percent of the current staff.

Currently, the company is not releasing any information about what job titles will be getting the ax. They are currently in negotiation with the unions for the workers. We do know that the jobs will come from the research and development area of the company. The company has yet to announce a final date for the workers to be cut, for the same reason.

Of course Sony is not the only company to have to deal with some fiscal issues in order to keep themselves on the right track. As a matter of fact they are not even the only mobile company to need to do so in order to get to right. For those of you missed out on our earlier coverage of some significant job cuts  being made to the mobile phone company T-mobile as part of their bid to stay competitive. For those of you who missed out on that coverage here is an excerpt that will get you up to speed in no time at all:

“You may not know this but the world of cell phone providers can be fiercely competitive, that is when the companies are not busy trying to make sweetheart deals. After all for all intents are purposes once you get past the hype they are all providing a new identical service, the ability to make a call on your cell phone and get internet access if you want it. Unless they have a really coveted piece of hardware as an exclusive, such as when AT&T was the only carrier for the iPhone, convincing customers to come to your service is the major issue. When that does not work the companies are bound to layoff.

That is the case for T-Mobile currently. Today, the company announced that it will be letting go of just shy of 2,000 workers in order to cut back on its costs. The 1,900 workers who are being cut from company’s call centers are being called part of an effort to restructure, though at the current moment there have been no more announcements related to this restructure.

You are probably wondering how bad it is for T-Mobile. Interestingly enough the company isn’t unprofitable but after a failed merger with AT&T some months ago the company has had to make some significant investments in new technology. While the company is hoping to eventually compete with larger carriers like Verizon it has a long way to go in order to make coverage maps and 4G data availability meet up with their major competitors.

Sadly, this is only the beginning of the layoffs for workers at T-Mobile’s call centers. It looks like the company maybe planning to consolidate call centers and cut down its current 24 centers to 17 over an undisclosed amount of time. Some people are estimating that the company will shed more than 3,000 jobs by the time all is said and done.”