I don’t know if it’s just a coincidence but isn’t it freakishly weird that as most parts of the world are celebrating Halloween, jobs are getting sacked?  It’s like Motorola Mobility timed their announcement of cutting jobs just in time for the feast of the dead.

“Both of the Company’s business segments (the Mobile Devices business and the Home business), as well as various corporate functions, are impacted by the action and the action affects employees globally,” stated Motorola in the SEC filing.

Motorola will cut about 800 workers – that’s about 5% of their total 17,000 workforce.  The layoff plan, Motorola said, will reduce their expenses in the long run but it will also cost them $31 million in severance pay.

According to Motorola’s spokesperson Jennifer Weyrauch-Erickson, “Motorola Mobility continues to focus on improving its financial performance by taking actions to manage the company’s costs.”

Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility will push through either by the end of this year or early next year, but the sad part about this is that 800 Motorola employees will not even experience what it would be like to be a part of Google’s team.

It’s not that surprising that Motorola is undergoing some downsizing as it finalizes the acquisition deal with Google, and as the mobile industry begins to consolidate around OEMs and platforms, this is an unfortunate byproduct.

Nevertheless, Motorola’s been busy preparing for the future, with a slew of new devices getting ready to hit the market, many in time for the holiday rush.  The Droid RAZR is the talk of the town, setting the bar high for what Motorola has to offer in the coming months, especially as its partnership with Google’s Android platform gets cozier.