Nokia R&D Workers Prepare to Research and Develop New Job Leads

“We are not announcing how many and in what country. But there will be substantial reductions in employment in various locations around the world, and that too will affect Finland.”

– Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, February 2011

LAYOFFS_BOBS_THUMB When Nokia first announced its mobile alliance with Microsoft back in February, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop warned that job cuts would follow. He didn’t say when or how many, only that they’d be “substantial.” Today we’ve got a better idea of what that means.

Finnish office-worker union representative Antti Rinne claims Nokia plans to cut up to 6,000 jobs in research and development. And he expects the cuts to be announced by the end of this month. That’s a massive reduction–about 38 percent of Nokia’s global R&D workforce–but a necessary one as the company transitions to its new smartphone strategy.

Remember, Nokia’s R&D spend is nearly three times that of its rivals and about five times that of Apple. There’s little reason to continue to spend that kind of cash on research and development now that the company’s dumped its own software platform in favor of Microsoft’s.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=692271649 Luis Eduardo Gutierrez

Today is the the day if the kills, first Flip… now this :P
http://www.facebook.com/people/Otto-Gustafsson/100000609100003 Otto Gustafsson

Nokia Siemens Network and Navteq R&D is also calculated into the Nokia’s R&D value.
demodave

I don’t see a link to the Digital Daily artcile from back then, but even then with the change-over to MS-OS I feared for the R&D group. 38% is indeed a massive cut. I don’t know how badly the economic slowdown affected NOK R&D previously, and/or how many lay-offs they have already had. If this 38% is their first foray into lay-offs, then they are behind the schedule of many companies, including my former company. But if they havealready been leaning out their organization, this cut will take a hugh chunk of meat out of that cow.
Anonymous

Five times that of Apple. Well, what do they have to show for it? Nada. It does not take R&D to produce 50 million plastic flip phones.

Nokia R&D Workers Prepare to Research and Develop New Job Leads

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