Contentinople - Erin Barker - News Bits: Yahoo Layoffs Finally Happening

Written by Erin Barker

Monday, December 8. 2008 at 11:35 AM EST Post a comment

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It's been confirmed: This Wednesday, Dec. 10, is the big day when the anticipated Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO) layoffs will go down.

Yahoo will lay off 1,500 employees from across the board (although human resources and finance will take the biggest hits), BoomTown's Kara Swisher reports. That number could eventually be upped to 2,000, due to worsening economic conditions.

Even with that increase, though, the total is still less than than the 3,000 layoffs consulting firm Bain & Co. reportedly recommended to them in October. Most employees don't know if they are laid off yet -- they'll be told on Wednesday and then given a "normal separation period," Swisher says.

In other news:

The iPhone is no longer cool -- the Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) smartphone will now be sold at Wal-Mart, alongside jump ropes and fertilizer, by the end of the month. Though spokesmen from Apple, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. , and AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) all declined to comment, a few California Wal-Mart employees blabbed when Bloomberg called up the cellphone departments of their stores. Analysts are predicting that Apple will sell a discontinued 4-gigabyte version at $99 through the discount retailer.

Sure, retail sites received plenty of traffic on Cyber Monday this year -- even knocking out a few of them temporarily -- and conducted 14 percent more transactions than last year. But, just as in brick-and-mortar stores, customers spent less on online purchases, and revenues only increased by less than 1 percent, The New York Times reports. The average value of each purchase by online shoppers has decreased by 12 percent from last year, according to Chase Paymentech’s Cyber Holiday Pulse Index.

Tags: Apple, Business, e-Commerce, Headcount, iPhone, Technology, Yahoo

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