Siemens AG announced plans to eliminate an additional 4,700 jobs at its Osram lighting unit after it injected 699 million euros (US$908 million) in capital to the subsidiary it is preparing to spin off next year.
The job cuts, primarily outside Germany, come on top of 1,900 positions that Osram already reduced in fiscal year 2012 and will help reap 1 billion euros (US$1.3 billion) in cost savings as the market for traditional light bulbs shrinks, the company said on Friday in a statement.
In total, the job losses at Osram will amount to about 7,300 positions. The measures will cost a “mid-three digit million figure” through 2014, with the savings realized in full a year later.
Photo: AFP
Siemens said this week that it would spin off Osram next year and retain about a fifth of the company, after realizing that investments to keep pace in the lighting market would be too great for the engineering company to shoulder. Siemens trails Royal Philips Electronics NV in the market for lighting, which is tilting toward LED technology based on semiconductors.
“Personnel increases in the future fields will only partially compensate for the change in the traditional businesses,” Osram chief executive officer Wolfgang Dehen said in the release. Osram had about 39,000 employees as of Sept. 30.
The majority of roles will be lost by selling factories abroad, mainly smaller plants or facilities making products that have reached the end of their life cycle, Osram said.
In Germany, three sites will be affected, including in Berlin and Munich, where Siemens is based. Of the planned savings of 1 billion euros, about 25 percent will be staff related, while the majority will come from lower purchasing costs and productivity gains, Osram spokesman Constantin Birnstiel said.
Siemens estimates the total lighting market will grow by about 5 percent each year to 2016, with LED market volume to quadruple by then to 37 billion euros, according to figures compiled by McKinsey & Co. The market for traditional lighting products will fall by 15 percent in that time, the data show.
Both Siemens and Philips have sought to push into the LED market, with Siemens opening a plant in China that will eventually employ 1,700 people.
Philips, based in Amsterdam, has also deepened job cuts at lighting facilities, and the company announced reductions at a factory in Belgium this month.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) secured a record 70.2 percent share of the global foundry business in the second quarter, up from 67.6 percent the previous quarter, and continued widening its lead over second-placed Samsung Electronics Co, TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said on Monday. TSMC posted US$30.24 billion in sales in the April-to-June period, up 18.5 percent from the previous quarter, driven by major smartphone customers entering their ramp-up cycle and robust demand for artificial intelligence chips, laptops and PCs, which boosted wafer shipments and average selling prices, TrendForce said in a report. Samsung’s sales also grew in the second quarter, up
LIMITED IMPACT: Investor confidence was likely sustained by its relatively small exposure to the Chinese market, as only less advanced chips are made in Nanjing Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) saw its stock price close steady yesterday in a sign that the loss of the validated end user (VEU) status for its Nanjing, China, fab should have a mild impact on the world’s biggest contract chipmaker financially and technologically. Media reports about the waiver loss sent TSMC down 1.29 percent during the early trading session yesterday, but the stock soon regained strength and ended at NT$1,160, unchanged from Tuesday. Investors’ confidence in TSMC was likely built on its relatively small exposure to the Chinese market, as Chinese customers contributed about 9 percent to TSMC’s revenue last
With this year’s Semicon Taiwan trade show set to kick off on Wednesday, market attention has turned to the mass production of advanced packaging technologies and capacity expansion in Taiwan and the US. With traditional scaling reaching physical limits, heterogeneous integration and packaging technologies have emerged as key solutions. Surging demand for artificial intelligence (AI), high-performance computing (HPC) and high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips has put technologies such as chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS), integrated fan-out (InFO), system on integrated chips (SoIC), 3D IC and fan-out panel-level packaging (FOPLP) at the center of semiconductor innovation, making them a major focus at this year’s trade show, according
DEBUT: The trade show is to feature 17 national pavilions, a new high for the event, including from Canada, Costa Rica, Lithuania, Sweden and Vietnam for the first time The Semicon Taiwan trade show, which opens on Wednesday, is expected to see a new high in the number of exhibitors and visitors from around the world, said its organizer, SEMI, which has described the annual event as the “Olympics of the semiconductor industry.” SEMI, which represents companies in the electronics manufacturing and design supply chain, and touts the annual exhibition as the most influential semiconductor trade show in the world, said more than 1,200 enterprises from 56 countries are to showcase their innovations across more than 4,100 booths, and that the event could attract 100,000 visitors. This year’s event features 17
RSS