San Francisco: Advanced Micro Devices Inc, the second-largest maker of processors for personal computers, plans to cut as many as 2,340 jobs, or about 20 per cent of its workforce, a person with knowledge of the matter said.
The cuts are expected to be announced as early as this week, said the person, who asked not to be named because the plans aren’t public. At least 10 per cent of AMD’s staff of about 11,700 will be affected, the person said on Friday.
AMD is striving to trim expenses to help cope with sagging demand for personal computers that rely on its processors. Sales in the third quarter will decline about 10 per cent from the prior period, a bigger drop than previously forecast, the Sunnyvale, California-based company said on October 11.
“With PC demand being so weak, we don’t think the company has any choice but to do some considerable cost-cutting measures,” said Betsy Van Hees, an analyst at Wedbush Securities Inc in San Francisco. Cuts of 10 per cent to 20 per cent are “aligned with what we were hearing from our industry checks as well,” said Van Hees, who declined to name her sources.
The technology site CNET reported earlier on Friday that AMD plans to cut as much as 30 per cent of its workforce. The blog All Things Digital said the measure would affect workers in engineering and sales.
