Posted on 05/24/2016 7:22:29 AM PDT by Lorianne
Nokia, once the undisputed king of the mobile phone industry, is to cut one thousand and thirty-two jobs in Finland, in a cost cutting exercise after its acquisition of Alcatel Lucent – the telecommunications network equipment maker, according to a statement issued on Friday.
Finland’s largest company has in fact shed thousands of jobs in the European country over the past few years, as it’s once mighty phone business was overtaken and outshone by companies who capitalised on consumer demand for smartphones, leaving Nokia scrambling to catch up.
Nokia started the cost-cutting program in April and is aiming to save almost a billion dollars of operating costs from the Alcatel deal by 2018.
The firm has not yet provided an overall figure for the job cuts globally, but is reportedly in talks with employees in thirty countries.
Nokia currently employs around 104,000 people globally, with 6,850 in Finland, 4,800 in Germany and 4,200 in France.
Years ago, I owned at least three of their phones. They worked excellently. The problem today is that “phone” today is considered a little used App on the iGadgets today.
Now, that ‘phone’ function of a personal communication device is that mostly reserved for emergencies, or when someone doesn’t respond to your FB, Twitter, Instagram or text.
My personal feeling is that the company that controls the autocorrect and spelling functions on the devices that most people will carry in this new century will control the world.
Nokia is back in the mobile phone business, after a fashion.
It has granted HMD Global an exclusive, 10-year license to the famous brand, allowing the Finnish startup to sell Nokia mobile phones and tablets.
Meanwhile Microsoft, which bought Nokia’s mobile phone activities in 2013, is finally getting out of the feature-phone business, selling its remaining interests in the Nokia brand and its Vietnamese phone factory to HMD and to FIH, a subsidiary of contract manufacturing giant Foxconn, for around $350 million.
Microsoft isn’t giving up on phones altogether: It will continue to develop the Windows 10 Mobile OS used in phones from manufacturers including Acer, Alcatel, HP, Trinity and VAIO, and in its own Lumia phones.
Nokia is now tightly focused on manufacturing telecommunications network infrastructure, following its acquisition of rival Alcatel-Lucent and its sale of the Here mapping business.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/3072138/mobile/microsoft-leaves-feature-phone-business-as-nokia-moves-back-in-sort-of.html
Nokia phones had better antennas and could pull in a strong signal and 10’s of mbs download speed where my Samsung S4 and LG3 phone barely could get a signal. A co-worker had one with Windows on it.
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