Struggling US technology giant Motorola has announced it will lay off another 9,400 employees in the face of a sales decline of as much as 10 per cent next year, to try to regain profitability.

A spokeswoman at the company's Chicago headquarters told The Irish Times that the cuts would be "global in scope, that they would affect every level of employee, and would affect companies as well as businesses". Motorola employs about 500 people in Ireland, mostly in Cork.

The spokeswoman said she could not give specific figures for job cuts in Ireland but emphasised "everybody's going to feel it somewhere". The global mobile phone and semiconductor manufacturer has now reduced its workforce by 32 per cent - from 150,000 worldwide to 107,000 - since August 2000, with 43,000 jobs going through layoffs. Another 5,500 went through sales of businesses.

The cuts, to be effected over the coming year, will mean 4,000 layoffs at its semiconductor operations, 1,300 at its equipment manufacturing businesses and another 4,100 throughout the company.

Designed to bring Motorola to profitability after a year of losses, the slimming-down exercise is expected to save the firm $865 million (€959 million) in 2002 and $1.1 billion after that. Company executives made clear they expect two more negative quarters in the first half of next year, making for six straight loss-making quarters, before a return to profitability in the third quarter of 2002.

The company said it would post a loss for the first quarter of next year of between 11 and 14 US cents a share, well above analysts' expectations. Its stock tumbled yesterday after the late-Tuesday announcement, as analysts cut earnings estimates. Motorola's main competitors, Nokia, Ericsson and Siemens, also saw their stocks dragged down by Motorola's gloomy outlook.

This is the third major restructuring since 1988 for the Illinois company, which once led the world in mobile phone sales. Its attempts to recover lost ground have been hampered by the global technology slowdown. The brunt of the current phase of layoffs may be felt at its semiconductor unit based in Texas, observers said.