Sun to lay off up to 6,000 more employees

Sun Microsystems Inc. will lay off 5,000 to 6,000 workers, or 15 percent to 18 percent of its work force, reports The New York Times.

The company expects to save $700 million to $800 million a year as a result of the move and earlier announced layoffs, while also taking up to $600 million in charges in the next 12 months.

"The focus here is to eliminate some of the inefficiencies that have made it hard to do business with Sun," said Jonathan I. Schwartz, Sun chief executive officer. He said a "new economic reality" has taken hold in the market, the Times reported.

The Times said Sun has battled for years to offset a slow, steady decline in its primary high-end server business and "defending those sales has become more difficult as Sun's customers on Wall Street curtailed their technology spending because of the financial turmoil. Sun is more dependent on Wall Street business than rivals like IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Dell."

Sun reported a first-quarter loss of $1.68 billion and a 7 percent year-over-year drop in revenue to $2.99 billion. At the time, Sun cautioned that it would probably restructure to bring costs in line.

The newspaper cited several other technology companies that are feeling the effects of the economic crisis, including network equipment manufacturer Cisco Systems Inc., chipmaker Intel Corp. and telecommunications companies Qualcomm and Nokia.