Sharp to cut 5,000 workers by March as revenue plummets
The company says that it will have 51,700 employees after it makes its cuts over the next several months.
After posting a disappointing quarter for the period ended June 30, Sharp has announced plans to reduce its workforce.
The company today said that it plans to cut 5,000 jobs by the end of March (PDF), reducing its global workforce by 8.8 percent to land at 51,700 employees. The cuts will come via voluntary and mandatory retirement. Sharp also plans to make "off-balance-sheet arrangements."
Sharp's workforce reductions comes amid troubling times for the company. Earlier today, Sharp announced that its revenue was down 28.4 percent year-over-year to land at 458.6 billion yen ($5.9 billion) during the first quarter of its fiscal year. What's worse, its losses widened from 49.2 billion yen last year to 138.4 billion yen in its fiscal first quarter.
Sharp doesn't anticipate things getting better anytime soon. In fact, the company was forced to revise its revenue forecast for the six months ending September 30 from 1.18 trillion yen to 1.1 trillion yen. Sharp also expects its net loss to widen from 70 billion yen to 210 billion yen.
But it wasn't all bad news for Sharp today. The company's president Takashi Okuda told reporters today that Sharp plans to start shipping iPhone 5 screens this month, paving the way for Apple to possibly launch the handset next month.