Sony Mobile Communications has announced some disappointing news this morning and confirmed that its headquarters will move from Lund, Sweden to Tokyo, Japan in October 2012. As part of the restructuring around 1,000 jobs will be lost in Sweden (650 full time and the balance being consultants) by March 2014.
The reason behind the move is to “enhance operational and development capabilities” of the company such as “time to market efficiency, streamline supply chain management and drive greater integration with the wider Sony group.”
Kunimasa Suzuki, President and CEO of Sony Mobile had this to say about the 15% cut in its global workforce: “We are accelerating the integration and convergence with the wider Sony group to continue enhancing our offerings, and a more focused and efficient operational structure will help to reduce Sony Mobile’s costs, enhance time to market efficiency and bring the business back to a place of strength.”
The Lund office will remain open and Sony says it will “continue to be an important strategic site, with the main focus on software and application development.” Apart from Tokyo and Lund, Sony Mobile also has a development centre in Beijing, China.
Here at Xperia Blog we’d like to thank all of the talented people that work in the Lund offices and wish them all the best for the future. We know some of these people very well and we can’t help seeing this as the end of an era when it comes to Sony’s smartphones.
