Nokia, the world’s biggest mobile phone maker, said yesterday it would shed about 330 jobs in Finland and Denmark as part of a streamlining of its vast research and development operations.
“The planned changes are expected to affect up to 230 employees at Nokia’s Oulu site in Finland and approximately 100 employees at Nokia’s Copenhagen site,” the firm said in a statement.
Nokia said it would try to find new positions within the company for the impacted employees and could offer voluntary redundancy packages for some.
It added it currently had some 17,000 employees in research and development, of which more than 2,000 were in Oulu and more than 1,000 in the Danish capital.
The mobile phone giant launched a cost-cutting program last January after its earnings fell as consumers cut back on buying handsets amid the global financial crisis.
The program aims to generate more than 700 million euros (US$1 billion) in annual savings.
Before yesterday, Nokia had announced about 3,700 job reductions since January, including around 1,300 voluntary redundancy packages.
Nokia’s announcement came after Sony Ericsson said on Thursday it would move its North American headquarters from North Carolina to Atlanta and close a half-dozen sites worldwide as it retrenches against what it expects will be a tighter market and cuts of about 1,600 jobs globally.
The company will consolidate product development operations by closing sites in Research Triangle Park; Seattle; Miami; San Diego; Kista, Sweden; and Chennai, India, spokeswoman Stacy Doster said on Thursday.
The site closures are new elements of a plan announced in April to cut worldwide staff of 10,000 by 20 percent at the joint venture between Sweden’s LM Ericsson and Japan’s Sony Corp, Doster said.
About 400 jobs have been cut since then and about 1,600 remain to meet that goal by the middle of next year, she said.
The cost-cutting follows the loss of 2,000 jobs last year.
The eight-year-old company has about 425 workers left in Research Triangle Park after shedding hundreds of jobs in the past year.
Operations include customer support, customer service, sales, finance and research and development.
Atlanta was chosen in part because of its proximity to AT&T Inc, one of the company’s largest customers, Doster said. The city also is desirable as a “gateway into Latin America” because of its international connections through Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, she said.
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