Kyocera Wireless Corp. announced it will move its mobile-phone and telemetry manufacturing operations from its headquarters in San Diego across the border to Tijuana, Mexico. The company said it would cut 450 manufacturing jobs in San Diego.
“Wireless is among the most competitive of all consumer electronics segments, and in order to compete today, manufacturers must leverage all resources available to them globally,” said James Kelly, Kyocera’s newly appointed executive vice president and chief operating officer. “Because manufacturing in La Jolla is cost prohibitive, we’re fortunate to have the manufacturing expertise and state-of-the-art facilities of our sister company KMX, located less than an hour away. Taking advantage of this opportunity is not only good for the company, it’s also good for the San Diego/Tijuana region as we’re maintaining over 1,500 jobs north of the border, while supporting the growing economy south of the border with our manufacturing operations.”
Kyocera also plans to cut another 150 jobs in San Diego in its service and repair business. The company said it will decentralize its service and repair operations, distributing the business to service centers in the Americas, Australia, New Zealand and India. Kyocera’s carrier partners requested the move to speed repair turnaround times and curtail shipping costs.
Kyocera said it will keep its sales and marketing, human resources, finance, and research and development efforts in its headquarters in San Diego.
Kyocera’s exit from the U.S. manufacturing scene leaves Motorola Inc. as the sole company building mobile phones in the United States. Motorola maintains a factory in Florida to build iDEN mobile phones for iDEN carrier Nextel Communications Inc. However, that factory too could eventually shut down, as Sprint Corp. is in the process of merging with Nextel. Many expect the combined carrier to eventually migrate to CDMA EV-DO network technology.
Of the other major mobile-phone manufacturers, Nokia Corp. operates a plant in Fort Worth, Texas, to handle the final assembly and logistics portion of the company’s U.S. mobile-phone business. LG Electronics Co. Ltd. builds its phones in Asia, but just this month opened a research and development facility in the United States.
The mobile-phone industry is not alone in moving manufacturing operations to low-cost regions like Central America and Asia. Most electronics manufacturing is done in places like China, Thailand and Mexico.
