Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc plans to cut about 4,000 jobs, or 20 percent of its labor force, with two-thirds of the losses outside the United States, including layoffs in China, the company said yesterday.

The move by Motorola Mobility, a unit of Google Inc, aims to improve product structure and profitability. Nokia Corp also unveiled job cuts recently, and industry insiders said Nokia, Motorola and RIM are facing great pressure from rivals such as Samsung and Apple.

Motorola Mobility will also close about one-third of its 94 facilities globally besides the job cuts, which will occur in the next few weeks.

"Motorola is committed to helping the staff through this difficult transition and will be providing generous severance packages as well as out-placement services to help them find new jobs," Motorola Mobility said in a statement.

Its China business will be affected but there are no details yet, Motorola Mobility spokesperson Si Xuanjun said yesterday.

Motolora Mobility has a manufacturing plant in Tianjin and research operations in Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu Province.

The job cuts were expected after Google completed a US$12.5 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility in May in its biggest takeover. Analysts said Google's purchase gave it over 17,000 patents amid rising popularity of its Android system for mobile phones and tablets.

Android has emerged as the No. 1 operating system for smartphones, with 68 percent of the global market in the second quarter, according to International Data Corp.