China's Founder Tech axes 200 jobs - spokesman

BEIJING Feb 23 (Reuters) - China's Founder Technology Group Co (600601.SS) has cut about 200 staff or just over 10 percent of its workforce, reflecting an increasingly fierce environment for computer makers, its spokesman said on Monday.

Chinese electronics and information technology firms, like their Western counterparts, are axing jobs to fight falling demand at home and abroad as a global recession prompts companies to cut back spending on technology.

"We've reduced the workforce from 1,600 to about 1,400," said Liu Rengang, a spokesman of Beijing-based Founder, following newspaper reports late last week of job cuts at the company.

Founder Technology has been losing ground to global rivals Dell (DELL.O) and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ.N) in recent years.

Founder's China rival, Lenovo (0992.HK), said in January it would cut 2,500 jobs as part of a restructuring to cope with falling demand for computers [ID:NnHKG82566].

In 2008, Founder's market share in the Asia-Pacific region, excluding Japan, fell to 4 percent from 5.1 percent a year earlier, IT research company IDC said. Its shipments fell 14.1 percent in the same period. (Additional reporting by Kelvin Soh in TAIPEI; Editing by Dhara Ranasinghe)