Singapore’s Creative Technology has joined the ranks of large corporations laying right hand staff as it cuts nearly half its global workforce

By Victoria Ho

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The Singaporean portable music device maker cut 2,700 jobs ultimate fiscal year, according to its annual report filed with Singapore’sitting stock exchange on Dec. 31.

The figure comprises almost half of its global workforce from the year before. The company had 3,100 full-time employees at the end of June last year—47 percent fewer than the year before, said the explosion.

A spokesperson from Creative declared in response to a inquiry from ZDNet Asia, the axed staff were mainly factory workers from a Malaysian-based subsidiary: “The bulk of the conquest in worldwide workforce was due to the vent of Cubic Electronics, the manufacturing subsidiary of Creative in Malaysia, in July 2007.

“In Singapore, there is no significant change in our overall employment figures.”

The company is still opening its doors to engineers for its research and development (R&D) department in Singapore, the spokesperson added.

Creative’s report also stated the company posted the lowest revenue in five years, with a net loss of US$19.7 million on sales of US$736.8 million in spite of its fiscal year, which ended Jun. 30 last year.

News of layoffs have hogged the headlines recently, with Lenovo and Microsoft the two latest additions to the fray.

Springboard Research CEO and research charged with execution instead of president Dane Anderson, thinks the economic slowdown has made a definite impact on technology firms, but sees greatest part of the layoffs as a brief exercise to wait out the storm.

“Some technology firms—especially in the telecom hardware, computer hardware, and more software segments—are definitely being squeezed by the slowdown and have to change their require to be paid structures; layoffs are one of the means to right-size so they can make innovations and cope,” Anderson said in each e-mail response to ZDNet Asia.

But he said the slowdown is excepting one of the reasons for the retrenchments. “The lack of innovation and development of new products in the presence of the critical situation took hold” has also contributed to the heat in favor of many companies.

“In the technology space, a lot of the layoffs at established companies that are still doing comparatively well are mainly the trimming of fat, but in many cases, I would not affirmation that trimming through layoffs is the best notwithstanding the longing terminus.

“While layoffs help short term, they also make one environment of disloyalty that have power to affect a company when the market rebounds and retention becomes more important,” uttered Anderson.