BenQ Mobile to Slash 277 Jobs in Germany

BenQ Mobile plans to cut 277 jobs at its facility in Munich, Germany, as part of a restructuring plan aimed at making the company profitable.

Nearly half the jobs being terminated are in R&D, BenQ Mobile said in a statement Tuesday.

It will also release 250 contract employees in Germany that work offsite, it said.

BenQ Mobile employs 3,100 people in Germany. It will offer the laid-off workers compensation arrangements that exceed legal requirements, it said.

The job reductions are part of a plan to turn the company around after a high-profile merger last year, when Taiwan’s BenQ took over Siemens’ loss-making mobile phone division.

The handset business had proved so tough for Siemens that it agreed to pay BenQ 250 million euros (US$319 million) to take the ailing division off its hands. BenQ has posted losses for the two quarters that have passed since the deal.

Earlier this year, BenQ Chairman K.Y. Lee said the company needed a hit mobile phone product in order to return to profitability.

So far, BenQ Mobile appears to be fumbling the task. Sales of handsets at the company declined in June, mainly due to delays in shipping new handsets, the company said.

Product rollouts in several countries proved to be more complicated than expected, said Eric Yu, a BenQ spokesman. The company has identified the bottlenecks and is moving to solve them, he said. BenQ aims to increase its average selling price for handsets, which it believes it can do because it has upgraded the technology and features of its phones, he added.

-Dan Nystedt, IDG News Service (Taipei Bureau)

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