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Intel cutting workforce as PC growth slows

The chipmaker will reduce its workforce by 5 percent in the shadow of a shrinking PC market.

Brooke Crothers Former CNET contributor
Brooke Crothers writes about mobile computer systems, including laptops, tablets, smartphones: how they define the computing experience and the hardware that makes them tick. He has served as an editor at large at CNET News and a contributing reporter to The New York Times' Bits and Technology sections. His interest in things small began when living in Tokyo in a very small apartment for a very long time.
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Brooke Crothers
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Intel's Fab 32 chip factory in Chandler, Ariz., opened in 2007. Intel

Intel plans to cut about 5 percent of its global workforce, the company said in a statement Friday.

That comes to roughly 5,000 out of a total workforce of 107,000, Reuters said.

"Intel will be aligning resources to meet the needs of the business this year. This will include targeted workforce reduction in addition to realignment of resources," Intel said in a statement provided to CNET.

The statement continued. "While we expect that employment will come down by approximately 5 percent this year, we are not announcing a layoff. When we talk about reduction of the workforce there are a number of things that can happen. It could include redeployments, voluntary programs, retirements, and through attrition."

Though Intel reported a rise in net income in Thursday's fourth-quarter earnings report, there were also some red flags.

CEO Brian Krzanich said the enterprise, aka corporate, market was weak.

"Enterprise...fell short of our expectations for the fourth quarter and the year as we overestimated the rate of recovery among corporate buyers," he said during the earnings conference call.

And when addressing the delay in starting the Fab 42 plant in Arizona, Krzanich also had some less-than-encouraging remarks about PCs.

"We have to start construction projects three years roughly in advance. They're very complex. If you go back three years ago, our view of the PC industry, PC growth was much more robust than what has played out," Krzanich said.

And research firm Gartner reported a slowing PC market in the fourth quarter earlier this month.