Hasta La Gadget!

It’s always a sad day when news come in of hard-working folks losing their cherished jobs — and, unfortunately, today’s one of those dismal days. In a detailed press release, Lexmark’s let it be known it’ll be be undergoing a company-wide restructure, but with the main focus being the exiting of the outfit’s inkjet hardware development and manufacturing — which, in the end, should save the printer maker about $95 million per year once the plan has taken place. Naturally, this doesn’t come without any repercussions, as Lexmark’s announced these restructuring actions will see around 1,700 worldwide jobs be lost; 1,100 of which are manufacturing positions, and also include the closing of an inkjet supplies manufacturing plant in the Philippines. Needless to say, we can only hope Lexmark sees better days. For now, however, you can peruse over the company’s official word in the presser located right past the break.

Continue reading Lexmark announces detailed restructuring plan: 1,700 layoffs, inkjet business to be nixed

Filed under: Misc, Peripherals

Lexmark announces detailed restructuring plan: 1,700 layoffs, inkjet business to be nixed originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Aug 2012 15:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Amid the rumors, sourced reports and statements, it was easy to lose track of the facts surrounding OnLive’s recent restructuring efforts. No surprise then, that the newly formed outfit has issued a press release and FAQ (after the break) in hopes will clear things up. First and foremost, the firm reiterates that the streaming game service will continue operating uninterrupted, and that the “newly formed company” that acquired the firm’s assets will continue to do business under the OnLive name. The announcement also mentions the Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors (ABC) process OnLive used to settle its debts, noting that “an affiliate” of Lauder Partners, a technology investment firm, was the new OnLive’s first investor. Finally, the firm laments the necessity of laying off its staff, stating that “neither OnLive, Inc. shares nor OnLive staff could transfer under this type of transaction,” confirming that nearly half of the previous staff had been offered positions at the new company, and optimistically projecting future hires culled from both previous and new employees. The new OnLive calls the asset acquisition “a heartbreaking transition for everyone involved,” but looks optimistically to a future of “transforming the OnLive vision into reality.” Check out OnLive’s full, official word on the matter below.

Continue reading OnLive officially announces asset acquisition, notes that its newly formed company will keep OnLive name

OnLive officially announces asset acquisition, notes that its newly formed company will keep OnLive name originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 19 Aug 2012 22:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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After a lot of back and forth from the rumor mill and official OnLive channels, we now have what we believe to be a far clearer view of precisely what is happening right now at OnLive headquarters in Palo Alto. We’ve spoken with a (now former) employee of the gaming service who ran down today’s events for us. According to the account, a meeting was held at OnLive’s offices at 10AM this morning, wherein the company’s CEO announced a massive staff layoff — at least 50 percent of the staff, according to our source’s numbers. The layoffs come as part of across the board cuts to the company, and all those out of a job will have their key cards deactivated as of 4PM local time today. The source was understandably baffled by the abruptness of the news, along with the added blow that no severance will be offered and stock holdings are essentially worth nothing.

The move apparently comes as OnLive is being purchased by an unknown party. Those being kept on have reportedly received offer letters from the new company. Why the sudden move? The source believes it may have something to do with the company’s massive operating costs, which we’re told are around $5 million a month. Certainly those concerns line up with a story dug up by Kotaku highlighting the company’s plans to file for Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors as a result of the company’s troubled financial situation. We’re still gathering information as to the nature of the buyout.

Update: According to our source, the writing wasn’t on the wall at the company per se, but OnLive had reportedly been entertaining acquisition offers ahead of the news from companies including HP.

Update 2: Our source has offered up some additional information on the matter, putting the average concurrent user number for the service at 1,100 to 1,500, peaking at around 1,800 on a given day — not exceptional by any means in the face of reported $5 million a month operating costs. The number of layoffs, meanwhile, may well be greater than originally suggested, with our source putting the number of employees staying on board at around 10 to 20 percent.

Filed under: Gaming

Source: OnLive undergoing buyout in wake of dire financials, laying off ‘at least 50 percent’ of staff originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 17 Aug 2012 17:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When Google acquired Motorola Mobility, Larry Page said the move would help “supercharge the Android ecosystem,” but first, the firm needs to reorganize. That seems to be starting — the company just announced that it will be closing a third of its 94 offices and laying off 20 percent of its workforce, including 40 percent of its vice presidents. The move will scale back its presence in Asia and India, says the New York Times, and will center its operations in Chicago, Sunnyvale and Beijing. The new, smaller Motorola will be working on less devices too, focusing on releasing a few high quality handsets each year as opposed to several dozen. Less phones means less parts, of course, and the firm says it will be dropping some suppliers and will be buying half as many components as a result. We’re all for the new Moto’s less-is-more approach and the potential it has to breed a new Nexus device, but Google’s already made it clear that it isn’t playing favorites with OEMs. Either way, it’s a start.

Filed under: Cellphones

Motorola to cut its workforce by 20 percent, shutter a third of its offices worldwide originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 13 Aug 2012 02:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Today Nokia announced that its deal to buy imaging company Scalado has been finalized — a sign of another piece of the puzzle falling into place for Nokia as it continues to restructure to reverse huge declines in handset sales. But that dark, Finnish cloud has a silver lining that we’ve been noticing: the emergence of a bunch of startups being formed by many among the 40,000 people that have been laid off. The other day we wrote about how some of the smaller players have been picking up funding from Nokia courtesy of its Bridge program. And now we’ve come across what might possibly be one of the more ambitious spin-offs yet.

Oulutalent is a team of no less than 500 former-Nokia employees based in the town of Oulu. The skills on offer, and the ready-made team, is a testament to what Nokia has had to drop by the wayside, but also what is on the market for the many tech companies out there fighting the war for talent.

Averaging more than 10 years of experience, the group claims to have “created over 50 devices including major blockbusters. In addition to devices, we have done novel cloud services and UI platforms from scratch. We are on the leading edge with touch and LTE phones, Linux and WiMax tablets and we have world-class technical competence on all.”

The group is being led by Pekka Väyrynen, an engineer who developed patented wireless technology for Nokia (that is, the patents that are reported worth up to $6 billion and may well start getting sold off to help Nokia’s cash position).

Effectively, what we have in Oulutalent is a handset-making operation that could in theory be bolted on to a company with mobile ambitions (Amazon? A new Asian entrant? Nokia’s MeeGo spinoff Jolla?); or one that is growing already and needs to expand. It plays on the big area of outsourced operations — something that may have been too expensive for Nokia to maintain may well be hard for another as well; this lets that cost stay off the balance sheet.

Oulutalent notes that it can provide a range of consulting and technical services, from identifying market opportunities and planning product portfolios; to “concepting” (covering hardware and user experience, simulation and prototyping); turning those concepts into products; and then helping with the aftersales.

One twist is that the team is not in full effect yet, with some employees still working out their terms with Nokia, according to a spokesperson for the company.

And another is whether Oulutalent will be able to prove to the market that it’s worth the investment: its success is partly dependent on whether others believe Nokia’s downfall was mainly due to some bad decisions from management; or whether it was also down to those executing on decisions.

Oulutalent is offering itself as a group for “turn-key product creation,” but there may be possibilities to engage smaller teams, too. That is the approach being taken by a similar project called Kyvyt (Finnish for “talent”). Despite its Finnish name, Kyvyt is based in the German town of Ulm, where Nokia also had a large team of people who apparently were working on its low-end Linux based platform Meltemi (another project Nokia left on the cutting-room floor). Kyvyt is offering out its pool of talent as and where it is needed, and it is also running events like job fairs, as well as posting job adverts on its site.

The Oulutalent spokesperson says that it will cooperate with Kyvyt, although declined to specify what that will mean. More detailed information, she says, will be coming out in coming weeks.

Ironically, as Nokia has been cutting staff, it’s taken a few on, too, to focus on areas where it hopes to stand out against handset competitors. The Scalado purchase will see some 50 people join Nokia’s smartphone operations in Lund, Sweden, where Nokia will be incorporating Scalado’s technologies and IP into its imaging business:

“We believe that this acquisition will strengthen Nokia’s leading position in mobile imaging and provide us with a great opportunity to create even better imaging products and applications,” Jo Harlow, executive vice president, Smart Devices at Nokia, said in a statement.

In the bigger picture, Nokia has insisted that it is safe and secure as far as cash reserves are concerned, but at the same time it’s running out of goodwill with the investment community: Nokia’s debt rating yesterday was cut once again by Moody’s, as the agency noted that losses in the current quarter will be even greater than previously thought. The three major credit agencies, Standard & Poor’s; Fitch and Moody’s have all now graded Nokia’s debt down to “junk” status.

Nokia, as before, has said that the “impact on the company is limited” with the company taking action to turn things around. The company says at the end of June it had a cash balance of €9.4 billion and a net cash balance of €4.2 billion, both higher than a year ago.

It’s not clear who is providing the capital to finance Oulutalent, although the Bridge program we wrote about before is basically restricted to startups of four people or less, so it’s unlikely to play a role here. We’re asking questions and will update as we learn more.