Factory retooling and job cutting at Nokia, focusing on smartphones

13th February, 2010 by adina
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The role of a key plant in Salo, Finland would completely change in order to focus on smartphone production. High-value smartphones would be manufactured in this factory, having Europe as a priority. Nokia expects to get a better mix of hardware but also a quicker turnaround in manufacturing the smartphones as a major change.

A first consequence of this switch to manufacturing methods that are characterized as highly specialized is, however, a cut of jobs of about 13 percent of the 2,200 workers activating in the Salo factory, which means 285 jobs. Some of these are expected to be moved to other positions in other places. These cuts are meant to stop the effects produced by the economic crisis. This could be a solution that would stop the temporary, rotating layoffs that are in place now.

Nokia’s total job cuts during the recent months would reach about 2,600, which add to another 2,300 previous losses of working places. The company is making concerted efforts to stop its sliding market share in smartphones. The most important decline has been in Europe, where the iPhone had an important success in countries like France and the United Kingdom. It also has good chances in other countries. Other handsets, like BlackBerry and Android are also significant competitors for Nokia in Europe.


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