Texas Instruments to eliminate 1,700 jobs worldwide

Texas Instruments, the US semiconductor maker, yesterday said it will eliminate about 1,700 jobs worldwide, in order to cut costs as it shifts away from the wireless mobile market to focus on its embedded wireless business.

The job cuts will reduce the Dallas, Texas-based company's headcount by almost 5 per cent from the nearly 35,000 employees worldwide and bring in annual savings of about $450 million by the end of 2013.

Texas Instruments said that it will take a restructuring charge of about $325 million, most of which will be accounted for in its current quarter.

"We have a great opportunity to reshape our OMAP processor and wireless connectivity product lines to concentrate on embedded markets. Momentum is already building with new embedded applications and a broad set of customers, and we are accelerating our efforts in these areas," said Greg Delagi, senior vice president of embedded processing.

Texas Instruments, which was the first to introduce the first single-chip LPC speech synthesiser in 1978, is shifting its focus from its wireless sector to industrial and automotive segment. It is also moving away from manufacturing and investing in chips for smartphones and tablets, since its customers are developing their own custom chips.

Until early this year, Texas Instruments wireless business produced wireless solutions for products such as smartphones and e-books, tablets, consumer electronics and other portable devices.