Layoff loom at tech firms

Hot Now

NEW YORK: Cisco Systems Inc's announcement that it plans to lay off 5,500 employees is unlikely to be the last round of Silicon Valley pink slips as hardware companies struggle to keep up with rapid technology shifts.

Companies that traditionally have made most of their money selling computers, chips, servers, routers and other equipment are especially vulnerable, analysts say, as mobile applications and cloud computing become increasingly important.

The Cisco layoffs come in the wake of Intel's announcement in April that it was laying off 12,000 workers.

Dell Inc said in January it had shed 10,000 jobs and is expected to make further cuts after it closes a $67 billion deal to acquire data storage company EMC Corp. So far this year, technology companies in the United States have shed about 63,000 jobs.

"The hi-tech industry is going through a serious deconstruction," said Trip Chowdhry, an analyst at Global Equities Research. "There is more pain to come."

Chowdhry said he expects job cuts to rise drastically as more companies subscribe to "super cloud" services from the likes of Amazon.com Inc and Microsoft Corp.