500 Workers Lost Jobs in AMD: Should AMD go for Laptops?

You know that It is the time of economy recession and many companies are now suffering from the global economic slow down. This is something that is affecting lots of jobs in many parts of the world. For example, there is no respite for American workers when it comes to unemployment figures. It seems that almost one million American workers have lost their jobs in 2008. So, I am not that much shocked to see that AMD is going to cut 500 jobs world wide.

Right now, AMD has nearly 15000 employees. So, it seems that the company is going to lay off nearly 3% of its total work force. As usual, Engadget has covered this news.

However I would like to quote from the report of New York Times blog:

Advanced Micro Devices said Thursday that it would cut close to 3 percent of its staff as it works to reduce costs and reach a break-even point of $1.5 billion in quarterly revenue.

The layoffs will affect close to 500 workers, leaving A.M.D. with about 14,960 employees. Drew Prairie, a company spokesman, said the cuts would be spread across a variety of departments and regions.

Here, I’d like you to remind you that AMD is not in good condition at this moment. Recently, it had to enter into a partnership with a Middle East company that has little experience of global business. To be honest with you, I was not impressed with this partnership because it may bring some valuable cash for the time being for AMD, but it will not bring any benefit for company in the long run.

You should also remember that in May, AMD went for a bigger job cut. So, it was perhaps clear at that time that the company would have to get a magical solution to the problems it is facing or else it will be in bigger problem.

The bigger problem came not from its battle with Intel but from the global economic recession. Economic recession is touching every sector and most probably, Google could save itself from this problem. The economic recession means that most companies are going to spend less amount of money for their take budget.

You may wonder whether Intel officials are now celebrating after hearing the job cut of AMD. Atom processor is becoming very popular among the consumers and it seems that economic recession may not touch Intel after all. Well, Intel is the largest player in the processor market and I think that any kind of economy slow down will harm Intel just the same way like its competitor. However, it is the smartness of Intel that from the beginning, it joined the bandwagon of low-cost Netbook laptops. First, it prepared its Classmate PC and then worked on low-consumption CPUs for Netbooks, MIDs and UMPC devices what AMD has been delaying so far. In this economy condition, many people prefer to purchase budget portable devices like Netbooks in range of $300 up to $600 rather than a standard laptop with the price tag over $1000. Although, AMD-based laptops are usually cheaper than Intel-based laptop, they are not as cheap as Netbooks!

So, in the end, I feel that AMD acted very slowly in the last few years about entering in the laptop field. Now, there is a growing trend of using more laptop computers than desktop computers. Intel understood this matter and responded at the right time with Classmate PC and Atom processor. So, AMD officials learn from their mistake and invest more on budget laptop computers.

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