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
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.