Cisco Laying Off 550 in Consumer Business Realignment

Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) said Tuesday it will cut more than 500 employees and take a pretax restructuring charge of up to $300 million in the second half of the year as it pulls out of some of its consumer businesses.

The tech giant, struggling to gain a major foothold in consumer products, unveiled plans to exit its Flip video camera business, among others. In posting its second-quarter financial results earlier this year, Cisco noted that revenue on the consumer products side dropped by 15%. At around the same time, the company’s head of consumer products left the company.

Cisco said it will realign its remaining consumer businesses to support four of its five major priorities: core routing, switching and services; collaboration; architectures; and video.

"As we move forward, our consumer efforts will focus on how we help our enterprise and service provider customers optimize and expand their offerings for consumers, and help ensure the network's ability to deliver on those offerings," said Cisco chief executive, John Chambers.