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OTTAWA – Dell Canada plans to close its customer contact centre in Ottawa by mid-year, bringing the total number of Canadian job cuts announced this year by the computer maker to about 2,000 as part of a global downsizing by the computer maker.

About 1,100 employees in Ottawa will be affected by the closure announced today. The layoffs were announced at a meeting this morning, where 500 people were laid off effective immediately. The rest go by the end of June.

Today's announcement follows Dell's decision to close its Edmonton customer call centre, announced in January, affecting 900 employees there, and the cancellation of an Ottawa expansion that was to make room for an additional 1,200 employees.

In total, Canada has accounted for nearly one-quarter of the job cuts announced so far by the Texas-based computer maker.

Earlier this month, Dell Inc. founder and CEO Michael Dell said the Texas-based company (Nasdaq: DELL) would cut more jobs than the 8,800 that had been announced last year.

Dell's chief financial officer said on April 3 that 5,500 jobs had been cut since the first round of downsizing was announced, with another 1,000 to come in this quarter, which ends June 30.

Michael Dell also said "we will go past the 8,800 target previously discussed" as the company worked to lower its costs further.

Once the world's biggest maker of personal computers, Dell was overtaken by long-time rival Hewlett-Packard in 2006.

HP and Dell also face challenges from Lenovo, a China-based company that bought IBM's personal computer business, as well as from the ever-changing demands of technology buyers.

Dell originally sold to companies and consumers with its own direct-sales force and without the retail channels that were used by IBM, HP, and Apple to reach at least some of their customers.

However, with the maturing of the personal computer industry as a whole and the company itself, Dell has begun selling through retailers including Best Buy Co., Wal-Mart Sores Inc fast payday loan no faxing. and Staples Inc.

It has also diversified its product line to include laptops, servers, printers and flat-panel monitors. In January, the company completed a $1.4 billion acquisition of EqualLogic Inc., which makes data-storage network systems.

Although Dell has had a Canadian subsidiary headquartered in Toronto since the company's early days, the Ottawa site is relatively new.

Operational since February 2006, the Ottawa site was is one of several customer contact centres that the Texas-based company opened around the world, including in the United States, Philippines and India, in recent years.

The Ottawa site initially had about 500 employees but was expanded once and there were plans to build another building in a second expansion that was abandoned after last year's restructuring was announced.

In October 2005, the company said it would expand its workforce at a similar centre in Edmonton to 1,000, from 750. The company announced the closure of the Edmonton site in January 2008.

In trading today on the Nasdaq stock market Dell Inc. shares rose one cent to US$19 on a volume of 13.2 million shares.

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