Nokia To Cut 10,000 Jobs and Close 3 Facilities

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Nokia To Cut 10,000 Jobs and Close 3 Facilities

Posted by timothy on Thursday June 14, 2012 @01:30AM from the role-of-management-is-to-suck dept.

parallel_prankster writes "NY Times reports that Nokia said on Thursday it would slash 10,000 jobs, or 19 percent of its work force, by the end of 2013 as part of an emergency overhaul that includes closing research centers and a factory in Germany, Canada and Finland, and the departures of three senior executives. The company also warned investors its loss was likely to be greater in the second quarter, which ends June 30, than it was in the first, and that the negative effects of its transition to a Windows-based smartphone business would continue into the third quarter. Nokia, based in Espoo, Finland, posted a loss of €929 million, or $1.2 billion, in the first quarter as sales plummeted 29 percent. Once the undisputed global leader in the mobile phone business, Nokia has been outcompeted by Apple, as well as by Samsung and other makers of handsets running Google's Android operating system." (Here's another source, if you're hit by the NYT paywall, and the company's own positive spin.)

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No good news in that by crazyjj · 2012-06-14 01:30 · Score: 5, Insightful

A lot of Apple fans and MS haters may be tempted to cheer, but the loss of 10,000 jobs in this economy means 10,000 families whose lives will been up-ended and that sucks no matter what phone you're rooting for.
And what's more, according to the article, a third of these job losses will come from Finland, with more in Germany and Canada. Decent western factory jobs seem to be going the way of the Dodo bird. Are there any phones still actually being manufactured in the first world? Even if Nokia recovers, what are the odds that those jobs won't reappear in Finland, but in China?

--
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
1. Re:No good news in that by Nursie · 2012-06-14 01:39 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Cheer?
  I can hate on MS as much as the next guy, but this is sad whatever way you spin it. Nokia used to create great products and be a byword for quality, reliable, cutting edge phones.
  Then they lost their way, management started all sorts of retarded internal competition games and the company just started chucking out hundreds of near identical handsets.
  Even then they had a significant market lead, even in the smartphone sphere, but they were losing it. This is when Elop came along and really killed them, jumping straight into bed with his old bosses and sealing the fate of a once-great european tech powerhouse.
  It's a shame to see such an icon driven into the ground.
2. Re:No good news in that by localman57 · 2012-06-14 01:55 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  The good thing about this will be that eventually all socialism will end....
  No it wont. Because some socialism is good. Public schools are good. Public roads are good. Public health initiatives are good. You have some socialist countries now that are highly uncompetitive. And you have highly capitalist countries, such as China, which are highly competitive, but creating externalities that make their current path unsustainable. Somewhere in the middle, a resonably free enterprise system with some government sponsored investment and a public safety net is where you're going to get the best overal quality of life over the span of decades.
3. Re:No good news in that by plover · 2012-06-14 01:55 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  It may have been obvious, but it was obvious long before Microsoft had anything to do with it, and this certainly isn't Microsoft's fault. Remember the Burning Memo? Nokia has been faltering ever since the Chinese factories have been able to create their own lines because of the cell phone chipset availability.
  Nokia took the Microsoft deal because it became evident to them that Nokia's own OS was no longer a selling point, so it didn't make sense to further invest in it. That saved them a few kroner in the short term, plus there was a longshot chance that Windows Phone 8 could have made a dent in the market. It obviously hasn't yet, nor did the tech community expect much different, but one never knows what the phone market will look like in five years.
  
  --
  John
4. Re:No good news in that by TheRaven64 · 2012-06-14 02:08 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  The MS deal didn't really have anything to do with it. Nokia lost its way almost a decade ago. They flailed around trying a large number of incompatible things, with no overall direction. The Symbian kernel rewrite was probably the last good thing they did and they failed to couple it with a decent userland, so Symbian programmers were still stuck with APIs that were designed for systems with under 4MB of RAM. They made a few half-hearted attempts at moving to Linux (ignoring the fact that they already had a decent kernel, it was their userland that was the problem), and then seemed to completely lose the plot.
  The MS deal was just another failure to fix the situation, in a long line of similar failures. It wasn't the cause, just another failed attempt at recovery.
  
  --
  I am TheRaven on Soylent News
5. Re:No good news in that by oh_my_080980980 · 2012-06-14 02:13 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Think again. Investors punished Nokia after the announcement of the Microsoft deal. Their stock took a massive hit. Then it took them ONE YEAR to bring a Windows phone to market and in the meantime they killed off their Symbian product.
  
  All this was in direct relation to the Microsoft deal.
6. Re:No good news in that by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-14 02:17 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  They could easily choose a different strategy and save the company. E.g. they could become OS-agnostic, just like Samsung: produce N9-like phone in both Maemo, Android and WP7 version, and see what sells best. I'm 100% sure lots of people would buy Android version of this phone because of the great looks and mature OS.
  Killing Symbian too early, killing Maemo right after it was finally ready to sell and going to WP7 only was the most stupid decision ever.
  I hope they eventually going to realize it and give that infiltrator from Microsoft the treatment he deserves.
7. Re:No good news in that by Penguinisto · 2012-06-14 02:41 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  They brought it on themselves, and have only themselves to blame.
  In all seriousness, Nokia sat around on its ass all smug and secure for way too long after the iPhone detonated, then redefined the market. Samsung, HTC, and many others busted ass to remake themselves and their products into credible contenders. Nokia sat around and watched their R&D flounder around, thinking they had all the time in the world to do something about it, all while pointing at Symbian's (then) massive dominance of the global smartphone markets. They then had a chance to make a clean break and start fresh, but they decided to back the wrong horse (with a nudge from their new Microsoftie CEO, natch).
  Moral of the story? Apparently it's two-fold:
  1) If you're on top, don't sit around on your ass all complacent about it.
  2) Never hire anyone who has previously worked as a Microsoft executive. They *will* fuck you over.
  
  --
  Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
8. Re:No good news in that by symbolset · 2012-06-14 02:47 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  The iPhone proved a hugely popular choice and the smartphone started to boom. Established players Palm, Nokia, RIM, Motorola Mobility, Samsung, HTC and LG faced a difficult choice as they clearly needed a new winner. Palm made the wrong choice to go their own way and imploded. Nokia went their own way and suffered but survived on momentum. RIM continued to go their own way, confident their customers were committed due to the nature of their offering. When Windows phone came out, almost all the survivors hedged their bets with it but RIM persisted in continuing to go their own way and imploded. When Windows Phone proved an unpopular choice most of the survivors kept it as a hedge but emphasized their alternative, but for some reason Nokia bet the farm on it and imploded.
  - History of Smartphone Economics, 2009-2012.
  "If you bet the farm often enough eventually you win a factory job."
  - Anonymous
  
  --
  Help stamp out iliturcy.
"negative effects of its transition to a Windows-" by White+Flame · 2012-06-14 01:34 · Score: 5, Funny

Whaaaaat?!?! Really? This is a tremendously unexpected turn of events that nobody outside of your boardroom dealings would have EVER suspected!
An award to Stephen Elop.. by GhostIdentity · 2012-06-14 01:38 · Score: 5, Insightful

Stephen Elop - The Trojan Horse of modern era.
1. Re:An award to Stephen Elop.. by oh_my_080980980 · 2012-06-14 02:24 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  I know Microsoft has alot of apologists but this is amazing.
  
  Investors did not agree with the deal and the chickens are coming home to roost. EVERYONE knew the deal was bad.
  
  1. No Windows phone for ONE YEAR. No product in one year is a lifetime in the smartphone market. 2. Killed off Symbian. Their existing lines of phones were selling. Their customer base starting jumping ship since those phones were being killed off for Windows phones that were yet to be seen.
  
  Every analyst knew the timeline was extremely bad for Nokia. Nokia could have survived had they not made the deal and worked on their own products.
The IP Vultures are Circling by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-14 01:39 · Score: 5, Interesting

Meanwhile, Microsoft, Apple, Samsung, and Google IP lawyers are circling to fight over the carcass (Patent Portfolio) of Nokia.
The end of Meltemi, Qt without Nokia by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-14 01:46 · Score: 5, Informative

Nokia was working on another Linux based operating system. This is now stopped.
More insight into how the board of Nokia is being stacked with Microsoft cronies.
Re:So what is your utopian alternative? by SgtChaireBourne · 2012-06-14 01:59 · Score: 5, Insightful

They're also getting rid of those popular low cost phones that have been selling in Africa and India. Elop is killing all possible ways to save Nokia and is actively ruining the company. Other analysts don't see Nokia returning to profitability devices in the foreseeable future either this year or next. There's nothing left to save. The pre-Microsoft Nokia is already dead and gone. There's nothing to rejoice about, it's just a fact.

--
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Nokia's death spiral continues by tuffy · 2012-06-14 02:08 · Score: 5, Interesting

I've found Tomi's ongoing saga of Nokia's downfall to be quite interesting. A choice quote about today's news:

The worse news is the guidance about Q2 profit warning and Q3 smartphone sales problems, that was hidden in the story about layoffs. So before, in Nokia's profit warning, Nokia said it will have problems with the handset unit profitability (producing a loss) in both Q1 and Q2. The losses for handsets in Q2 were supposed to be similar to Q1 ie -3%. Now we hear that Q2 losses will be bigger than 3%. This is VERY BAD NEWS. It really means that Nokia is falling into the hole and the rate of the fall is only increasing.
The gist of it being that Windows isn't working, and Elop is killing any possible "plan B" for the company.

--
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
1. Re:Nokia's death spiral continues by tpheiska · 2012-06-14 02:18 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Mod parent up. The blog in question is awesome. For example this:
  "Before the Burning Platforms memo, in 2010 Nokia towered over its rivals like very few companies have ever managed in a Fortune 500 size scale. Nokia's smartphones sold more than 2x those of the iPhone and more than 3x as many as Samsung. Today only 18 months later, Nokia is a third the size of the iPhone and one quarter the size of Samsung's smartphones. Never, ever, in any industry, has a global market leader collapsed this comprehensively. This is a world record in destruction of a market leader. Understand what that means. Elop has set a world record in management failure. He is a world record holder in the most incompetent CEO that has ever been. Not just the worst CEO now, but of all time - that is what 'world record' means - and this collapse of Nokia is BY A WIDE MARGIN the biggest collapse of a global Fortune 500 sized company, who was the market leader in its own industry. I have been asking my readers to come up with any example of such total collapse in 12 months in economic history - never been done. Never. This is the worst management failure of all time! And it was not caused by a tsunami or earthquake or national revolution or exploding factory. It was caused by Stephen Elop. He started the destruction on a February day in Espoo when he released his Burning Platforms memo. "
  
  --
  "wahts woring iwth my tyoping?"
Re:A brilliant mix of capitalism and socialism,... by localman57 · 2012-06-14 02:18 · Score: 5, Funny

I find the subtlety of your argument confusing and upsetting. COMMUNIST!
I tend to disagree here.. by GhostIdentity · 2012-06-14 02:29 · Score: 5, Interesting

You may be right, but Nokia still had a fat chance of comeback with MeeGo, as already proved by Nokia N9 (I own one, and I easily claim it to be better than most, if not all, of the current smartphones due to its intuitive Swipe UI). Who was saying no to building Windows smartphones? But Elop apparently wasn't satisfied with only that. He had to kill the burning platform (Symbian) as well as the blooming platform (MeeGo). That is what has pushed Nokia off the cliff, IMO. I may seem to blame Microsoft (I actually do it inside my mind, though, having been a genuine Nokia fan since I became aware of phones), but the fact still stands that Elop cruelly slaughtered any remaining chances that Nokia had, with or without Microsoft behind him.