Nokia Going to Cut 10000 Jobs.


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Nokia has announced another huge shake-up of the company, with the loss of 10,000 jobs by the end of next year. While planning to significantly reduce its operating expenses, Nokia also announce an increased emphasis on location-based services. The planned job losses are expected to come from the closure of its facilities in Ulm, Germany and Burnaby, Canada and in its homeland, Salo, Finland. The company confirmed that research and development efforts in Salo will continue though.

Nokia is also making changes to its management team.

"These planned reductions are a difficult consequence of the intended actions we believe we must take to ensure Nokia's long-term competitive strength," said Stephen Elop, Nokia president and CEO. "We do not make plans that may impact our employees lightly, and as a company we will work tirelessly to ensure that those at risk are offered the support, options and advice necessary to find new opportunities."

In Smart Devices, Nokia plans to broaden the price range of Lumia and continuing to differentiate with the Windows Phone platform, new materials, new technologies and location-based services. In line with this strategy, Nokia today announced the planned acquisition of assets from Sweden-based Scalado, which currently has imaging technology on more than 1 billion devices.

In Mobile Phones, Nokia intends to improve its competitiveness and profitability. Nokia aims to further develop its Series 40 and Series 30 devices, and invest in key feature phone technologies like the Nokia Browser.

Taking into account these planned measures the company now targets to reduce its Devices & Services operating expenses to an annualized run rate of approximately EUR 3 billion by the end of 2013. This is an update to Nokia's target to reduce Devices & Services operating expenses by more than EUR 1 billion for the full year 2013, compared to the full year 2010 Devices & Services non-IFRS operating expenses of EUR 5.35 billion.

This means that in addition to the already achieved annualized run rate saving of approximately EUR 700 million at the end of first quarter 2012, the company targets to implement approximately EUR 1.6 billion of additional cost reductions by the end of 2013.

Nokia also announced today a number of changes to its senior leadership. Nokia announced that it has appointed Juha Putkiranta as executive vice president of Operations; Timo Toikkanen as executive vice president of Mobile Phones; Chris Weber as executive vice president of Sales and Marketing; Tuula Rytila as senior vice president of Marketing and Chief Marketing Officer; and Susan Sheehan as senior vice president of Communications.

Jerri DeVard steps down as chief marketing officer; Mary McDowell steps down as executive vice president of Mobile Phones; and Niklas Savander steps down as executive vice president of Markets.

During the second quarter 2012, competitive industry dynamics are negatively affecting the Smart Devices business unit to a somewhat greater extent than previously expected. 

Furthermore, while visibility remains limited, Nokia expects competitive industry dynamics to continue to negatively impact Devices & Services in the third quarter 2012. Nokia now expects its non-IFRS Devices & Services operating margin in the second quarter 2012 to be below the first quarter 2012 level of negative 3.0%. This compares to the previous outlook of similar to or below the first quarter level of negative 3.0%.

"Nokia is significantly increasing its cost reduction target for Devices & Services in support of the streamlined strategy announced today," said Timo Ihamuotila, executive vice president and CFO. "With these planned actions, we believe our Devices & Services business has a clear path to profitability. Nokia intends to maintain its strong financial position while proceeding aggressively with actions aimed at creating shareholder value."