Motorola Mobility cuts 25 percent of workforce, 500 jobs, in Chicago

The new Moto G is available now and the high end Moto X Pure Edition is launching soon, but all this good hardware news can't keep Motorola from making tough business choices. The Chicago Business Journal reports that Motorola Mobility will be cutting 500 positions, that's 25 percent of the workforce at the Merchandise Mart building in Chicago.

I had the pleasure of spending time with many Motorola employees at the Merchandise Mart, including fellow engineers, at last year's Motorola phone and smartwatch launch. The Merchandise Mart facility is awesome and I spent all day there with enthusiasm to get glimpses behind the curtains as phones and watches were designed, tested, and marketed.

Yesterday, ZDNet's Chris Duckett wrote that Lenovo planned to cut 3,200 non-manufacturing jobs, about 10 percent of the total workforce, and it looks like the Chicago offices are seeing a significant portion of those cuts. Spokesperson Will Moss told the Chicago Business Journal that this Motorola Mobility downtown office is "not as badly impacted as some of our other sites."

Motorola just moved into the Chicago Merchandise Mart last year, prior to the launch event I attended, but Motorola may be giving up some of that space after the drastic workforce reductions.