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May 20, 2009

Late yesterday, Nokia said it will eliminate another 170 employees globally in an effort to further reduce costs as the worldwide recession continues to soften demand in the cell phone market.

However, the lay off in jobs in production and logistics for mobile devices won't affect production workers at Nokia's mobile device manufacturing facilities, Nokia said.

In March, Nokia announced more than 2,400 job cuts globally and temporary layoffs of 2,500 workers in Finland.

The world's largest mobile phone manufacturer said it will also offer buyouts to about 325 employees at its manufacturing plant in Finland after a similar program for 1,000 global Nokia employees proved effective.

Ville Valtonen, Nokia's personnel manager said "the earlier voluntary resignation package raised a lot of interest among production employees, who were excluded from this particular global program."

"We now want to offer this opportunity to our production employees in Salo, as we continue to adjust production capacity according to day-to-day market demand."

Nokia aims to further cut costs at its mobile handset unit by about 700 million Euros ($920 million) annually, and said it will continue "to seek savings in operational expenses, looking at all areas and activities across the company."

Last month, Nokia reported that first-quarter net profit plummeted 90 percent to 576 million Euros and sales fell 27 percent as the world economic downturn continued to hit the cell phone industry.

Even with the job cuts, Nokia still employs 124,000 people worldwide. In 2008, it sold 468 million mobile handsets, up 7 percent when compared to the year before.

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Source: Nokia.