Motorola has warned of yet another sales shortfall and will cut 2,000 more jobs, as the gloomy global telecommunications sector refuses to brighten.
The cuts will come from the company's Global Telecom Solutions Sector, which handles cellular phone network development and manufacturing.
Specific jobs and locations have not yet been identified, a Motorola spokesman said.
In December 750 of Motorola Irish employees lost their jobs when the firm signed an international alliance with Celestica which led to the closure of the firm’s plant in Swords Co Dublin.
The company still operates a software centre in Cork.
The latest in a string of warnings from the world's second-largest mobile phone maker comes just over a month after chairman and chief executive Mr Christopher Galvin apologised to shareholders for its consistently poor performance and pledged improvement.
The company said it was cutting the 2,000 jobs in its wireless infrastructure unit by the end of the year, bringing the total number of company-wide cuts to 32,000, or 21.8 per cent of its total employees at the end of 2000.
Motorola said the unit was hurt by slower growth as wireless service providers delayed capital expenditures. This confirmed Ericsson's warning that it was seeing no signs of a recovery in the industry.
Ericsson, the world's largest wireless infrastructure firm and third largest mobile phone maker, said on Tuesday the telecommunications industry was unlikely to recover next year, sparking a sell-off among wireless and telecommunications equipment companies.
Motorola now expects sales for the third quarter to be flat, hurt primarily by a weak wireless network equipment market and continued slowness in the semiconductor sector. Previously, it had projected third-quarter sales to be up 5 per cent from the second quarter.
Motorola shares closed off $2.46, or 15 per cent, at $13.94 on the New York Stock Exchange last night, a low unseen since June. Since the start of the year, Motorola shares have fallen more than 30 per cent.