4,000 more job cuts at Nokia; smartphone assembly shifting to Asia

Nokia, the once-dominant mobile handset maker, today announced that it would eliminate another 4,000 factory jobs, this time in Finland, Hungary and Mexico and shift the assembly of all smartphones to Asia.

The job cuts of 2,300 in Komarom in Hungary, 700 in Reynosa, Mexico and 1,000 in Salo in Finland, is part of Nokia's 2011 restructuring plan. These factories will instead focus on software development while Nokia focuses on its Windows Phone pipeline.

The cuts follow the Espoo, Finland based company's September 2011 announcement of plans to slash 3,500 jobs in Romania, Germany and the US by the end of 2012, and close a plant in Romania as part of a new restructuring plan. (See: Nokia to cut another 3,500 jobs by 2012, close Romanian plant)

The planned layoffs are also in addition to 7,000 job cuts already announced by Nokia in April 2011, when it unveiled a €1-billion cost-cutting programme. As part of strategy to focus on smartphones, 3,000 employees were transferred to consultancy group Accenture.

The present job cuts amount to 7 per cent of its workforce, bringing the total planned job cuts  to more than 30,000 since Stephen Elop took over as CEO in September 2010.

"With the planned changes, our factories at Komarom, Reynosa and Salo will continue to play an important role serving our smartphone customers," Nokia executive vice president Niklas Savander said in a statement. "They give us a unique ability to both provide customisation and be more responsive to customer needs."