Intel to cut 140 staff across IoT divisions, reports claim

US chip-maker Intel is cutting 140 staff across its IoT divisions, according to reports in Silicon Valley Business Journal and The Times.

As many as 100 staff in the company’s Santa Clara headquarters, as well as 40 staff in Leixlip, Ireland, have been let go. All of the staff involved are said to have worked within Intel’s IoT divisions.

The reports follow Intel’s announcement in June that it has discontinued three of its IoT and embedded device market offerings. The Edison, Galileo and Joule compute modules and boards, which had been developed to bolster Intel’s IoT strategy, are no longer in production.

“There have been some changes in our workforce that are driven by the needs and priorities of the business, which we consistently evaluate,” an Intel Ireland spokeswoman told The Times.

“Efforts are being made to mitigate the impact by helping employees identify other suitable roles in the company.”

An uncertain future

The news does come as a surprise, however, given that Intel announced back in April 2016 that it was laying off 12,000 employees as part of a $1.2 billion restructuring process that was apparently intended to tackle the rise of IoT, and the continuing slump in PC sales.

At the time, CEO Brian Kraznich, admitted “It’s time to make this transition and push the company all the way over”, with a renewed focus on supplying chips for smartphones, cloud computing, sensors and other IoT devices.

In Q1 of 2017, Intel’s IoT division generated $721 million in revenue, which marks an 11 percent increase year-on-year. These numbers equate to less than 5 percent of Intel’s sales, though, and the job cuts raise questions around the future of Intel’s IoT strategy.

Roughly 300 staff also took voluntary redundancy last year, though the chip-maker is yet to confirm the final number, alongside the staff cuts today. “We have not publicly disclosed the number of redundancies made as part of our global restructuring program, and do not plan to do so,” the company said.