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发帖数: 341 | 1 Are Qualcomm Layoffs a Disaster for San Diego — or an Opportunity?
http://www.xconomy.com/san-diego/2015/07/27/are-qualcomm-layoff
Jeff Belk
After years of strong corporate and financial growth, the pace of change in
the wireless industry has forced a massive global layoff at San Diego-based
Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM. If the wireless giant had only 1,000 employees, a
layoff of 150 folks would not be big news. But with a worldwide payroll of
31,000, and a planned layoff of up to 4,700 people, the implications of this
downsizing has San Diego concerned.
Leaving a company where you have worked for years is hard. It can happen
many ways. It can be a personal decision, where one’s personal goals and a
company’s direction no longer align, and leaving is the way to go. Or it
can be where a company’s goals and organizational structure must be
realigned to respond to changing business realities.
On a personal level, leaving a company, either voluntarily or laid off,
sucks. I’ve been on both sides of the equation many times: laid off, having
to lay off folks, or making a tough personal choice to depart a company. I
spent almost 14 years at Qualcomm, from 1994 through 2008, and leaving
Qualcomm is about as hard as it gets. Over the years, deep personal and
professional relationships are built, all with the shared purpose of
changing the world though advancing wireless. And as employees and the
community know, Qualcomm has a unique culture, high energy, built on “doing
your homework,” and by treating and compensating employees extremely well.
So does that mean that potentially thousands of layoffs by Qualcomm in San
Diego represent a disaster? I don’t think so.
Even though this will be very hard for those laid off and their families, it
could end up being a watershed moment on a community level. Thousands of
highly skilled employees across a broad range of disciplines are going to re
-enter the job market. Most are early or mid-career. Many have advanced
degrees, amazing global contacts, and have been trained and mentored by
world-leading technologists. And most importantly, many will not want to
leave San Diego.
So what’s going to happen?
These people are going to leave Qualcomm, be appropriately grumpy for weeks
or months, or perhaps take well-deserved vacations, and then they are going
to get back to work.
They are going to fill much-needed technical and business slots at other
established companies in town, not only in wireless, but in application
development, Internet of Things, and even find their way into San Diego’s
exploding life sciences and genomics sectors. They are going to take “that
idea they had” and start banding together, and found new companies in town.
They are not done yet.
Thirty plus years ago, there was a fiftyish year old guy who built a company
in San Diego doing some really high-tech stuff, mainly for satellites. He
sold his company to a defense contractor back East, and over time became
increasingly disenchanted with the direction the new owner was taking the
company. He did not want to leave San Diego, but he left the combined
company where he had been working for some time. In his own words, “I
stayed on … until April 1, 1985 when some…management changes made it less
interesting.” But he was not done either.
That was Irwin Jacobs. Here’s an interesting “what if:”
What if the company where he was working had made it really comfortable for
Irwin and his team to stay where they were, doing work for a Massachusetts
company that still exists today, albeit with 900+ employees world wide, and
a market capitalization 1/60th of Qualcomm’s? What if Irwin and the team
that helped start Qualcomm had stayed put, collected nice salaries and
benefits, and had retired to the beach or bike paths ten or fifteen years
later?
Would San Diego have ended up being arguably the wireless capital of the
world? Would UC San Diego and its engineering school (aided by hundreds of
millions of dollars from Joan and Irwin Jacobs) be racheting up the list of
the world’s top universities? Here’s a time-worn link to the list of
companies that can be traced back to Irwin Jacob’s first company. As a
Qualcomm alumni, it’s clear to me that there are dozens more companies that
keep on being founded, nurtured, funded, and grown by current Qualcomm
alumni—a process that will only accelerate in the months and years to come.
Will another Qualcomm come out of this process?
I don’t know, and frankly it doesn’t really matter—as long as the San
Diego wireless community continues to coalesce, drive innovation, and find
ways of integrating this amazing new pool of talent. That means all of us—
the trade groups (EvoNexus, BioCom, San Diego Venture Group, and others),
local universities, and others, need to reach out to these folks and put
them to work as volunteers, mentors, and budding entrepreneurs.
And Qualcomm, I’ve got challenge for you! You have established venture
funds in China, South Korea, and elsewhere around the world, that target
digital health and other specialized fields of innovation. How about
establishing a fund that targets innovation in San Diego?
As for my former colleagues at Qualcomm, I just want to say, it’s going to
be OK!
Jeffrey Belk was at Qualcomm for almost 14 years, in positions including
senior vice president global marketing, and senior vice president, strategy
and market development. He serves on the boards of the Wireless Life
Sciences Alliance, the UCSD Alumni Association, and the EvoNexus advisory
board. He is founder and chairman of Velocity Growth, and has invested
several other local companies. | y*******7
发帖数: 16 | | d******1
发帖数: 349 | 3 Qualcomm CEO: 'We have to pivot the company'
Restructuring will better position company in markets like the Internet of
Things, wireless health
Mugshot of Mike FreemanBy Mike Freeman | 1:44 p.m. Sept. 2, 2015
"There are number of different markets that we think will leverage
mobile technology. And our job is to pivot the company to take advantage of
that over the next five years," said Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf in an
exclusive interview with the San Diego Union-Tribune.
"There are number of different markets that we think will leverage
mobile technology. And our job is to pivot the company to take advantage of
that over the next five years," said Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf in an
exclusive interview with the San Diego Union-Tribune. — U-T
0
It has been a rough year for Qualcomm.
In July, the San Diego smartphone chip maker announced it would cut 15
percent of its global workforce and examine splitting into two separate
companies.
The moves came after activist investor Jana Partners took a large stake in
the company a few months earlier amid lackluster performance. Qualcomm’s
share price has dropped 24 percent so far this calendar year – though part
of that decline stems from the recent market sell-off.
For Chief Executive Steve Mollenkopf, it means the pressure is on. He took
over as part of a management change about 15 months ago. First, he dealt
with an anti-monopoly probe by the Chinese government that resulted in a $
975 million fine but kept Qualcomm’s technology licensing business model
intact.
Now he’s restructuring the company with an activist investor looking over
his shoulder.
Qualcomm is San Diego’s largest technology firm, with $26.5 billion in
revenue last year. It employs 31,300 globally and around 15,000 in San Diego
. It hasn’t handed out pink slips yet, but they are expected to come
shortly.
The company says the restructuring will better position it in emerging
growth markets such as connected cars, the Internet of Things, wireless
health, small cells and the data center, among others.
Mollenkopf spoke with the San Diego Union-Tribune this week about the
rationale behind the company’s moves and his view of the future. Here are
some excerpts.
Q: What’s the status of Qualcomm today?
A: The company is exactly 30 years old, which is amazing given all the
things we have done. Now we are in a position where we have to pivot the
company.
Those of you who know our history know we have had to do this a number of
times. We are working on where do we grow outside of the phone.
The phone continues to be a great business. It is going to continue to grow.
We are in the enviable position to be able to use the phone market, which
is very diverse in terms of technology, to allow us to grow into new areas
So a lot of what we are doing this year is repositioning the company’s
resources so we can continue to deliver on the phone opportunity but more
importantly deliver on these new opportunities.
Q: To pivot the company, you have to know where to go. So where do you go
beyond the phone?
A: In general, what characterizes these opportunities are a bunch of
industries that are trying to figure out how do I leverage what’s happening
on the phone.
The car is great example of that. The user experience of the car – the new
components – are related to the fact that the car is connected to the
Internet.
Every major car company is trying to figure out how do I deploy the Internet
into the car? How do I get cars to talk to each other? How do I get more
safety? How do I get the ownership experience to change dramatically as a
result?
That’s just one. Health care is another, the Internet of Things. So there
are number of different markets that we think will leverage mobile
technology. And our job is to pivot the company to take advantage of that
over the next five years.
Q: How big are these businesses?
A: If you look at each individual opportunity, it’s not that big actually.
But if you look at them in aggregate, we did some projections. If you look
at our chip business and take the products we already have, it’s a $10
billion market. And if you look at it over the next five years, it’s a $20
billion market.
That’s pretty significant for us. Not only are these markets growing, but
we are not starting from scratch. We are already delivering over $1.5
billion into these markets.
Q: You are getting ready to lay off thousands of people. Who is going to do
this work?
A: If you look at the company, we have grown tremendously, particularly over
the last five years, in terms of the business as well as the number of
people we have.
We probably have too many people in the core handset business, and we need
to redeploy assets to some of these other businesses. Sometimes those assets
need a different skill set. Some people in San Diego unfortunately will be
impacted by that.
Q: How many people in San Diego?
A: We haven’t announced, but it will be clear here soon. Obviously Qualcomm
is very committed to San Diego, and we are going to help the people get
redeployed to the degree that we can. We have always been supportive in
these types of situations. We also think people who come out of Qualcomm are
pretty well trained. So we are hoping they will be good participants in
some of these companies that we are going to be partnering with.
Q: You are using the term redeploy. You are talking about layoffs, aren’t
you?
A: I think we are doing both. If you look at the size of the business, it
needs to be a different size. We are just at a point where the industry is
changing, and successful companies need to get ahead of that and redeploy
for the next wave of growth.
Now to be clear, we are still going to be a very significant technology
company. We are going to spend over $4 billion a year in research and
development even after we do the restructuring.
Q: A 15 percent head count reduction is a significant layoff. What mistakes
were made and why won’t they happen again?
A: I think our track record as a company, our track record in terms of doing
new technology and our position going into these new businesses, is one of
strength. We just need to have a different size business – smaller in some
areas and bigger in other areas.
We are not unlike other technology companies that have to make these changes
. It is part of being a 30-year-old company that has been successful. You
have to make these pivots to be successful again.
Q: Can you talk about what’s happening in the core smartphone business?
A: If you look back to 2008, people didn’t have smartphones. Now everyone
essentially has a smartphone. We had tremendous end market growth – 30
percent a year. Now the end market growth worldwide is not at that same rate.
It’s still significant. Remember, there are going to be 8 billion new
smartphones (sold) over the next five years. So it is still going to be a
strong business going forward, but we need to make sure it is structured to
be profitable and successful in an environment where it is not growing at 30
percent a year anymore.
Q: When you come out of this pivot, do you want to come out as one company,
two companies?
A: What we announced is we are taking a look at the corporate structure. We
have done it numerous times in our past. When we are running the business,
we are looking at things that can either help us in a negotiation or drive
shareholder value.
We are working through it. We are going to make some decisions and an
announcement before the end of the year.
That being said, we are very focused on what I would call the fundamentals
of driving technology into the industry. Are we better off doing that as one
company, two companies? Those are the type of issues that the board and
management team deal with all the time, and we are doing it again this time.
Mugshot of Mike Freeman
Mike Freeman
More from Mike Freeman
Qualcomm CEO: 'We have to pivot the company'
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[在 yong92127 (Don) 的大作中提到：]
：http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2015/sep/02/qualcomm-ceo-pivot-the-company/
：
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发帖数: 349 | 4 公司将化为各个BU(Business Unit)，QCT是其中一个BU，可能是为了以后的拆分吧。
Good Luck QCOM. | f*******2
发帖数: 341 | 5 Qualcomm CEO
新词PIVOT的定义：
【在 y*******7 的大作中提到】
: http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2015/sep/02/qualcomm-c
: Qualcomm CEO: 'We have to pivot the company'
| d******1
发帖数: 349 | 6 尼玛，跟我们玩文字游戏。
[在 fangzhou2 (Fangzhou) 的大作中提到：]
：Qualcomm CEO
：新词PIVOT的定义：
：........... |
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