Nokia To Cut 10,000 Jobs and Close 3 Facilities

parallel_prankster writes "NY Times reports that Nokia said on Thursday it would slash 10,000 jobs, or 19 percent of its work force, by the end of 2013 as part of an emergency overhaul that includes closing research centers and a factory in Germany, Canada and Finland, and the departures of three senior executives. The company also warned investors its loss was likely to be greater in the second quarter, which ends June 30, than it was in the first, and that the negative effects of its transition to a Windows-based smartphone business would continue into the third quarter. Nokia, based in Espoo, Finland, posted a loss of €929 million, or $1.2 billion, in the first quarter as sales plummeted 29 percent. Once the undisputed global leader in the mobile phone business, Nokia has been outcompeted by Apple, as well as by Samsung and other makers of handsets running Google's Android operating system." (Here's another source, if you're hit by the NYT paywall, and the company's own positive spin.)

Nokia always made the best hardware

[Anonymous Coward]

Nokia always made the best hardware. All they had to do was make an Android phone and they would have been set.

This ranks right up there with the other colossal commercial blunders (Netflix, GM/Chevy, Burger King's evil king, etc).

The IP Vultures are Circling

[Anonymous Coward]

Meanwhile, Microsoft, Apple, Samsung, and Google IP lawyers are circling to fight over the carcass (Patent Portfolio) of Nokia.

A sad day...

[christianT]

It's a shame to see Nokia falling apart. It was not long ago that they had the very promising n900. I was all ready to buy one of those until I found out that it wasn't available on my carrier of choice, and in fact the only carriers it was available on in my area were the ones with the poorest coverage.

Re:Idea

[h4rr4r]

Would not happen. Instead they would buy the companies fire all the workers and replace them with MS party line type folks. You would get a phone that RRoD would be a known issue for years, and would be worse than any the two previous companies made before. NIH is a huge issue for MS.

Nokia's death spiral continues

[tuffy]

I've found Tomi's ongoing saga of Nokia's downfall [blogs.com] to be quite interesting. A choice quote about today's news:

The worse news is the guidance about Q2 profit warning and Q3 smartphone sales problems, that was hidden in the story about layoffs. So before, in Nokia's profit warning, Nokia said it will have problems with the handset unit profitability (producing a loss) in both Q1 and Q2. The losses for handsets in Q2 were supposed to be similar to Q1 ie -3%. Now we hear that Q2 losses will be bigger than 3%. This is VERY BAD NEWS. It really means that Nokia is falling into the hole and the rate of the fall is only increasing.

The gist of it being that Windows isn't working, and Elop is killing any possible "plan B" for the company.

I tend to disagree here..

[GhostIdentity]

You may be right, but Nokia still had a fat chance of comeback with MeeGo, as already proved by Nokia N9 (I own one, and I easily claim it to be better than most, if not all, of the current smartphones due to its intuitive Swipe UI). Who was saying no to building Windows smartphones? But Elop apparently wasn't satisfied with only that. He had to kill the burning platform (Symbian) as well as the blooming platform (MeeGo). That is what has pushed Nokia off the cliff, IMO. I may seem to blame Microsoft (I actually do it inside my mind, though, having been a genuine Nokia fan since I became aware of phones), but the fact still stands that Elop cruelly slaughtered any remaining chances that Nokia had, with or without Microsoft behind him.

Re:An award to Stephen Elop..

[gl4ss]

there's reports that the existing symbian lineup has sold better this spring than the wp line. they hid the information on their reports though, bundling them together.

there's no excuse for elop announcing things too early and declaring a profitable business dead.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:No good news in that

[chrb]

How is China capitalist? It is certainly more capitalist than it was 10 years ago

It depends on how you define capitalism. 10 years ago I watched ARM Chairman Robin Saxby [wikipedia.org] give a keynote speech where he said, "China is wonderful - it's the most capitalist country on Earth." What he meant was that, regardless of the central planning, China was actually a very good environment for doing business. Chinese suppliers were very competitive, and producing low price goods and materials. There were very limited regulations on employment, wages, manufacturing etc. and no need for employers to pay employee taxes, provide health care etc. China didn't even have free education for all children until 2006. That "central planning" that some people despise has led to China having a modern and efficient infrastructure, which in turn makes business more efficient.

In China, you can hire a person for $200/month, work them 100 hours a week, and fire them on the spot. That is a level of "capitalism" unmatched in Europe or the U.S.

TIME: Why China Does Capitalism Better than the U.S. [time.com]

Re:No good news in that

[Tough Love]

They could easily choose a different strategy and save the company.

Fire Elop and sue Microsoft?

Re:Carriers buy phones, not people

[TheSunborn]

In the USA that is true, but Nokia sells most of it phones outside of USA where consumers pick the phones.