The poor state of the economy isn’t good news for anyone, not even the world’s top cellphone maker Nokia. The Finland based company has recently announced that they have been forced to cut 490 positions bringing the total number of layoffs for this year alone over 4,000.

Nokia hopes that saying goodbye to these employees will help them reach their goal of cutting annual costs totaling almost $1 billion. With the cellphone market expected to shrink by 10% this year it’s probably in Nokia’s best interests to introduce such layoffs as unfortunate as it may be.

Read (Reuters)

Tags: Business, Cell Phones, cellphone market, economy, employees, finland, job cuts, Layoffs, Nokia, Nokia, recession

The layoffs continue and Nokia is biting. Despite being the world’s largest mobile phone maker, Nokia has to cut down its workforces as well. With an expected layoff of as many as 1,000, a voluntary departure package has been laid out. However, these layoffs will not impact the firm’s Indian operations, for it being one of the growing markets in the world.

Nokia has said the new plan would lessen the need for “involuntary redundancies” and also help in cutting costs.

“The voluntary resignation package will be open for application from March 1 until 1,000 employees have applied, closing at the latest on May 31, 2009,” the Finnish company said in a recent statement.

When contacted, a spokesperson of Nokia India said, “India is one of the growing markets and the above mentioned package does not imply on them.”

In fact, the company is still recruiting in India.

The voluntary measures are aimed at reducing personnel- related costs and lessening the need for involuntary redundancies, it added.

(Source) The Asian Age

Tags: Business, departure package, india, Layoffs, mobile phone maker, Nokia, Nokia, redundancies, Voluntary Resignation

Cell phone manufacturers are being hit hard by the current recession and have started a wave of lay-offs that promises to continue into 2009 and possibly beyond. Sprint-Nextel, suffering from a huge fourth quarter loss, recently announced it will lay off 8,000 workers, or 13% of its total work force. Texas Instruments, a company that makes chips for cell phones is shedding 3,400 jobs, or 12% of its total workforce. Sales of the chips used in cell phones fell 2.8% worldwide in 2008, a result of economic uncertainty in the face of overall slower growth.

Sprint, however, has been struggling with severe image problems since well before the global economic downturn, most of them a result of poor customer service and lack of customer retention. At one point in 2008, Sprint became so desperate to stop hemorrhaging customers it started a special unit that intercepted negative posts on message boards and consumer forum by former customers, interrupting those posts with an instant message from a Sprint CSR offering to make the issue right. Apparently, that move was too little too late.

Tags: Business, Downturn, Layoffs, Sprint