Hardware manufacturer AMD has announced it will be cutting roughly ten percent of its workforce as a result of lower-than-expected financial performance in the first quarter of the fiscal year.
The company said it expected first quarter revenues for fiscal year 2008 to hit $1.5 billion, a jump of 22 percent over revenues for the same period in 2007 but 15 percent lower than the fourth quarter of that year. First quarter revenues has previously been expected to reach $1.6 billion, according to an Ars Technica report. The job cuts will result in the loss of 1600-1700 workers.
The increased availability of AMD’s Phenom processor, cuts to the Radeon HD 3850 and 3870 video cards and the introduction of a new ATI HD 3000 series video card were not enough to turn the company’s fortunes, which AMD blamed on lower-than-expected sales across all market segments. AMD gave no indication of how the shortfall and job cuts would affect its next-generation Shanghai processor or its plan to achieve profitability by the second quarter of 2008.
Originally founded in 1969, AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) has become the second-largest global supplier of x86-based microprocessors, best known for its Athlon series of CPUs. In July 2006, the company acquired graphics technology company ATI in a deal worth $5.4 billion.
