Texas Instruments today announced 1,700 job cuts and a change in strategy away from the mobile market.
Texas Instruments makes chips for a number of mobile devices, including Amazon's Kindle Fire, but had been talking in recent months of moving away from the industry to focus on other areas where it had more opportunity to grow.
Texas Instruments will now focus on OMAP processors and wireless connectvity solutions embedded into devices, rather than system on a chip (SoC) products, which it claims are increasingly being developed in-house by mobile manufacturers.
"We have a great opportunity to reshape our OMAP processor and wireless connectivity product lines to concentrate on embedded markets," said Greg Delagi, senior vice-president of the embedded processing division at Texas Instruments.
"Momentum is already building with new embedded applications and a broad set of customers, and we are accelerating our efforts in these areas.
"These job reductions are something we do with a heavy heart because they affect people we care deeply about. We will work closely with all employees affected by these changes to provide a range of assistance related to compensation, benefits and job search."
Texas Instruments claims through the job cuts and stopping investment in the area the company can save $450m by the end of 2013.
There will be costs involved, which the company has estimated at $325m, but it believes these will all be covered in its fourth quarter (Q4). This number was not included in its results outlook from the end of October though, so when it reports its financials, it will be likely to miss expectations.
