Texas Instruments firing staff in India, plans to cut 300 to 500 jobs as part of global restructuring

BANGALORE: Chip designer Texas Instruments (TI), the first global corporation to identify India's technology prowess by setting up a development centre in the 1980s, is shedding a few hundred employees in India as part of a global restructuring. This marks another chapter in the company's history and also the story of India's IT industry.

Several employees in the Dallas-headquartered firm's Indian operations that ET spoke to said between 300 and 500 engineers were being shed as part of the global cull that will see it reduce focus on making chips used in mobile phones and tablets to concentrate on more profitable areas.

"Texas Instrument has cut down an entire business unit. These are experienced developers with 2-5 years experience and some senior managers as well," one employee told ET.

"The numbers could reach around 500 since the company is terminating the entire business unit," another employee said. Both employees requested anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the media.

The lay offs are a first in India for the company, which set up its first development centre in Bangalore in 1985 and employs about 1,500 engineers in the country.

A TI spokesperson acknowledged that employees were being let go, but declined to share numbers. Globally, the company has announced plans to lay off some 1700 employees, or 5% of its workforce. It hopes to make annualised savings of about $450 million by the end of 2013.

"This decision is consistent with TI's previously outlined intentions to focus its OMAP processors and wireless connectivity solutions on a broader set of embedded applications with long life cycles, instead of its historical focus on the mobile market where large customers are increasingly developing their own custom chips," said Narahari KS, director of communications at the Indian arm, in an emailed statement.

The global restructuring will reduce TI's focus on chips used in mobile phones, an area where faces stiff competition from rival Qualcomm. Also, as large phone-makers such as Samsung have started designing and making their own chips, TI management decided to re-focus its research focus to more relevant areas.

TI, which credits itself for the first ever cellphone made in India, also was the first MNC to install a satellite dish in Bangalore back in the early 1980s to export software from India.

With about $14 billion (Rs 77,000 crore) in revenues, TI is the third largest manufacturer of semiconductors worldwide after Intel and Samsung and second largest supplier of processors for mobile phones after Qualcomm.

Narahari said that the global decision will have some impact on Indian employees as well but said that there will be opportunities for some employees to get re-deployed to other divisions within the company.

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