On December 18, Beijing time, ARM, a British chip design company owned by SoftBank Group, recently laid off more than 70 software engineers in China. However, ARM has moved some of these positions outside of China. People familiar with the matter said that ARM outsourced the work of supporting Chinese customers to ARM China through a department called "Global Services", which at one time had about 200 employees.
Employees in the department will be laid off or relocated. Among the laid-off employees, approximately 15 will be assigned to different positions on China-related projects.The eliminated positions will be filled by contract software engineers who have worked on projects across ARM's global business.
At present, China's contribution to ARM's global revenue has dropped from 25% to about 20%, and business growth in other regions is much faster. With the semiconductor industry sluggish due to sluggish demand for electronic products, ARM's layoffs follow the example of major chip companies such as Qualcomm, which cut their global workforce earlier this year.In November this year, ARM issued disappointing revenue expectations due to declining smartphone sales.
ARM responded in a statement: "To ensure that the Chinese software ecosystem can take full advantage of ARM's performance and functionality, ARM is reorganizing China's software engineering resources to focus on directly supporting local developers."