(Yicai Global) Aug. 2 -- US tech giant Cisco Systems will trim its China  staff, an insider who wished to go unnamed told Yicai Global.

"The layoff will mostly involve sales positions," the source said, but  without revealing the numbers involved. "Future sales will be taken over  by Cisco's Chinese joint venture, so all sales and authorization  related positions will be cut because [they] devour a large portion of  the firm's operating costs."

The San Jose, California-based firm has two offices in Shanghai, one for  research and development and one for sales, according to the insider,  and the cull will leave the R&D office relatively unscathed.

Cisco has over 2,000 employees in the center, and the firm's ongoing global  business adjustment will impact just some of them, rather than  decimating the whole unit, the firm announced yesterday.

The company will release its financial report on Aug. 14, the insider said. The firm's stock [NASDAQ:CSCO] price has risen over 20 percent overall this year.

Cisco's main line is selling network software and hardware, per the firm's  second-quarter financial report. It took in USD9.7 billion from selling  routers, switches and other conventional core products last quarter,  making up 75 percent of its total revenue, per the report.

Yet Shenzhen-based telecom titan Huawei  Technologies' router sales rose 8.6 percent in the operator market last  year to rank it first worldwide with a 30 percent market share, thus  surpassing Cisco, London-based global market analytics firm IHS Markit  noted in an annual survey report last year.

Cisco will foray into the could service market where its rivals include  compatriots Microsoft and Amazon as well as Chinese tech titan Alibaba  Group Holding, all of whom, will give it a good run for its money in  terms of both conventional hardware and cloud services.

Editor: Xu Wei, Ben Armour