U.S. chip-maker Intel announced Tuesday that it will cut 12,000 jobs globally by mid-2017 in a restructuring initiative designed to meet the challenge of declining personal computer market.
The layoff, about 11 percent of Intel's workforce, will help to speed its shift from a PC firm to one that powers the cloud and billions of smart, connected computing devices, said the Santa Clara, California-based company.
The data center and Internet of Things (IoT) have replaced PCs as Intel's primary growth engines, according to a company release. It said the new businesses made up 40 percent of its revenue and the most of its operating profit last year, which offset the decline of PC sales.
Intel has long been the world's leading provider of PC chips, but global demand for PCs has been dropping in recent years, forcing the company to try to reduce its dependence on PCs and move to cloud, mobile and other types of computing.
"Our results over the last year demonstrate a strategy that is working and a solid foundation for growth," said Intel CEO Brian Krzanich. "The opportunity now is to accelerate this momentum and build on our strengths."
The company plans to increase investment in the high-growth areas and drive more profitable mobile and PC businesses. The products and technologies it will focus on include data center, IoT, memory and connectivity businesses.
These changes will result in the worldwide reduction of employees through site consolidations. Most of the affected workers will get notice of these actions within 60 days.
Intel expects the job cuts will deliver 750 million U.S. dollars in savings this year and annual run rate savings of 1.4 billion dollars by mid-2017.
On Tuesday, Intel also posted its first-quarter results, which showed a revenue increase to 13.7 billion dollars from 12.78 billion, higher than previous predictions.
