Palm cuts workforce by 19 per cent

By Alun Williams

Posted on 28 Feb 2003 at 15:07

Palm has confirmed that 19 per cent of its total workforce has been laid off in the previous three months. Its workforce has been reduced to a total of 900 employees.

To be precise, both the hardware division, Palm Solutions Group, and the software-oriented PalmSource group have been affected. The latter is a separate operation, which was formed as a company when Palm split off its Palm OS operations.

Lorraine Legros, European PR Manager for Palm confirmed the cuts and told us that Palm were practically untouched in Europe - three people have been made redundant. She said that the European operation had largely escaped the cuts because the group was performing well within Palm.

Legros told us that the split between across the hardware and software divisions was 10 per cent from the Palm Solutions Group and 9 per cent from PalmSource.

The figures relate to the previous three months and emerged on the eve of Palm's quarterly results. These financial results are due out in the States on 20 March.