File photo
A temporary Sony Ericsson sign was placed over the old Ericsson sign in RTP on Davis Dr. after the Sony Ericcson partnership began. The campus will be shut down, and more than 400 jobs will be lost.
Sony Ericsson, the world's fourth-biggest maker of mobile phones, is shutting down its North American headquarters in Research Triangle Park as the beleaguered company consolidates global operations.
The joint venture broke the news to employees this morning at 8 a.m. in a company-wide meeting held at the Embassy Suites hotel in Cary. The closure, which is expected to happen in the coming months, is part of the company's strategy to cut its worldwide staff of 10,000 by 20 percent and shed 2,000 people.
Sony Ericsson's 425 RTP employees were told they could go home for the rest of the day, giving the site a vacant feel more typical of a weekend or holiday. Even before today's announcement, the 8-year-old venture had shed about half its RTP employees during the recession.
RTP is one of eight Sony Ericsson sites that will close, along with sites in Seattle, San Diego and Miami, as well as sites in India and Sweden.
"We have several sites we're closing around the world in an effort to consolidate R&D," said spokeswoman Stacy Dorster. "They haven't told us on the timing. It really is a project that's going to come to fruition."
The RTP site includes customer support, customers service, sales, finance market and research and development. Many of those workers came to Sony Ericsson from parent company Ericsson, which has been operating in RTP since 1991.
Some Sony Ericsson employees will be offered positions with the company at other sites. Company executives are drawing up plans to determine which jobs will remain with the company and will notify employees early next year about their options.
As it closes the North Carolina complex and consolidates its South American and North American business units, Sony Ericsson is moving its North American headquarters to Atlanta, where currently it has 18 employees. Atlanta was selected because it's the headquarters of Sony Ericsson's biggest customer, AT&T Wireless.
Sony Ericsson never was able to gain traction in the global handset market as it competed against the Motorola Razr and other trendy phones. Sony Ericsson's best-known products include the Sony Walkman phone and Cyber-shot camera phones.
Just two weeks ago the company introduced its version of a smartphone, called Xperia X10. It runs on Android, Google's open-source mobile operating system created to compete with the Apple iPhone and other mobile operating systems.
