Apple restructuring plan: job losses top agenda

Apple is expected to announce up to 5,000 redundancies this week when it releases details of its restructuring on 14 March.

According to US reports, the company is likely to adopt a radical organisational plan, setting up multiple autonomous units, but it may kill off some products such as the Newton and Performas. Apple is expected to cut 2,000 to 5,000 jobs from its 11,000-strong workforce and the charge is likely to be from $300 million to $350 million.

Its long-term aim is to develop a set of independent P&L centres to meet changing market needs. This will be achieved by setting up an overall holding company, which would set corporate policy in areas such as channel structure and strategic relationships, but leaving operational decisions, such as choice of resellers and retail strategies, to the individual units.

The vendor will also focus on fewer products but deliver them on multiple platforms. The emphasis will be on high-margin ranges such as portables and servers and on products for markets where Apple is entrenched, such as desktop publishing.

The business units will be arranged around technologies, not verticals. But the main growth plans are in software, particularly the Nextstep OS.