Nokia to shed more than 1,000 jobs in Finland

Once the world’s top mobile phone maker, Finland’s Nokia has been crushed by Samsung and Apple in the smartphone and tablet market in recent years, but earlier this month said it was retuning to the fiercly competitive field.

Once the world’s top mobile phone maker, Finland’s Nokia has been crushed by Samsung and Apple in the smartphone and tablet market in recent years, but earlier this month said it was retuning to the fiercly competitive field. (AFP)

Mobile phone giant Nokia is to cut more than 1,000 jobs in Finland, the company announced Friday, as part of cost-cutting measures following its merger with Alcatel-Lucent.

Once the world's top mobile phone maker, Finland's Nokia has been crushed by Samsung and Apple in the smartphone and tablet market in recent years, but earlier this month said it was retuning to the fiercly competitive field.

Nokia last month said it expected some 1,300 jobs to go in Finland, but the number announced in a statement on Friday was slightly lower, at 1,032.

The company is targeting 900 million euros ($1 billion) of savings per year starting in 2018 and further redundancies are expected around the world.

In its first earnings announcement since the deal with French-American rival Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia reported a first quarter net loss of 513 million euros ($583 million) earlier this month.

The company, just three days back, said that it was about to re-enter the mobile handsets business. Nokia Technologies had said that it has granted HMD global, a newly founded company based in Finland, an exclusive global license to create Nokia-branded mobile phones and tablets for the next ten years.

While HMD will focus on new devices that will carry the Nokia brand name and run on Google's Android OS, Foxconn's subsidiary FIH Mobile Limited will manufacture, sale and distribute Microsoft's feature phones. Microsoft is believed to have sold the portfolio to Foxconn after the last quarter alone saw a 46 percent drop in phone revenue, slightly better than the 49 percent drop in the quarter before that.

"We are looking forward to fostering a strong and long-term collaboration with HMD global and Nokia. We are impressed by the experience and expertise of the HMD management team and are committed to supporting them with our manufacturing, technology and supply chain capabilities, to capture market opportunities together in the future," Vincent Tong, chairman of FIH, said.