Arm Holdings PLC has laid off more than 70 software engineers in China, although it plans to relocate some of the roles outside of China, people with knowledge of the move said.
The British firm’s actions mirror those of major chip companies, including Qualcomm Inc that have cut back on the global staffing level earlier this year as the semiconductor industry faces a downturn due to lackluster electronics demand. Last month, Arm gave a disappointing sales forecast amid a slump in smartphone sales.
About 15 of the staff whose positions are being eliminated are to be offered different roles working on China-related projects, one affected employee said.
Photo: Bloomberg
The jobs being terminated are currently filled by contract software engineers who have worked on projects that span Arm’s business around the world, another affected engineer said.
“In order to ensure that the China Software Ecosystem can fully maximize the benefits of Arm performance and features, Arm is restructuring its China software engineering resources to focus on direct support for local developers,” the company said in a statement.
China’s contribution to Arm’s global sales fell to about 20 percent from 25 percent as rest of the world grew much faster, CEO Jason Child told analysts last month.
The Softbank Group Corp-backed firm has been affected by Washington-imposed restrictions on technology exports to Chinese companies as Arm has developed some of its proprietary designs — widely used in mobile devices — in the US.
Arm is still recovering from the turmoil of an extended dispute with the ousted head of Arm China, a joint venture owned by Softbank and a group of Chinese investors.
Former Arm China CEO Allen Wu (吳雄昂) refused to leave his post after being dismissed, and it took investors years to retake control.
Arm China acts as the sales office for the British chip designer in the largest market for semiconductors. Earlier this year, the Chinese entity itself let go of more than 100 employees, most of them working in the research and development unit, where they were creating new chip technology for the local market, the affected employees said.
Arm outsourced the work of supporting Chinese customers to Arm China via a division called global service, which had as many as 200 employees at one point. More than 70 employees at that department have been let go, with some expecting an offer to be relocated, one affected employee said.
TRADE WAR: Tariffs should also apply to any goods that pass through the new Beijing-funded port in Chancay, Peru, an adviser to US president-elect Donald Trump said A veteran adviser to US president-elect Donald Trump is proposing that the 60 percent tariffs that Trump vowed to impose on Chinese goods also apply to goods from any country that pass through a new port that Beijing has built in Peru. The duties should apply to goods from China or countries in South America that pass through the new deep-water port Chancay, a town 60km north of Lima, said Mauricio Claver-Carone, an adviser to the Trump transition team who served as senior director for the western hemisphere on the White House National Security Council in his first administration. “Any product going
High above the sparkling surface of the Athens coastline, the cranes for building the 50-floor luxury tower centerpiece of Greece’s future “smart city” look out over the Saronic Gulf. At their feet, construction machinery stirs up dust. Its backers say the 8 billion euro (US$8.43 billion) project financed by private funds is a symbol of Greece’s renaissance after the years of financial stagnation that saw investors flee the country. However, critics see it more as a future “ghetto for the rich.” It is hard to imagine that 10km from the Acropolis, a new city “three times the size of Monaco”
STRUGGLING BUSINESS: South Korea’s biggest company and semiconductor manufacturer’s buyback fuels concerns that it could be missing out on the AI boom Samsung Electronics Co plans to buy back about 10 trillion won (US$7.2 billion) of its own stock over the next year, putting in motion one of the larger shareholder return programs in its history. South Korea’s biggest company would repurchase the stock in stages over the coming 12 months, it said in a regulatory filing on Friday. As a first step, it would buy back about 3 trillion won of paper starting today up until February next year, all of which it would cancel. The board would deliberate on how best to effect the remaining 7 trillion won of buybacks. The move
In a red box factory that stands out among the drab hills of the West Bank, Chat Cola’s employees race to quench Palestinians’ thirst for local products since the Gaza war erupted last year. With packaging reminiscent of Coca-Cola’s iconic red and white aluminum cans, Chat Cola has tapped into Palestinians’ desire to shun brands perceived as too supportive of Israel. “The demand for [Chat Cola] increased since the war began because of the boycott,” owner Fahed Arar said at the factory in the occupied West Bank town of Salfit. Julien, a restaurateur in the city of Ramallah further south,
RSS