Nokia Oyj, the world’s largest maker of mobile phones, will cut about 4,000 jobs in its factories in Hungary, Mexico and Finland to speed up the delivery of devices and get closer to suppliers.
Device assembly is expected to be transferred to factories in Asia, where the majority of component suppliers are based, Nokia said in a statement. The Salo, Finland plant, established in 1979, makes smartphones for European markets.
Chief Executive Officer Stephen Elop unveiled his strategy for the company a year ago this week with the announcement Nokia would manufacture handsets running Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Phone software. The Salo plant was spared from the first rounds of job cuts and outsourcing deals, which hit engineers working on Nokia Symbian smartphone software that was being ramped down in favor of Windows Phone.
The company’s smartphone sales declined 25 percent to 77.3 million units last year as customers shunned the Symbian line. Nokia, based in Espoo, Finland, introduced its Lumia handsets running Windows Phone six weeks before the end of the year and said on Jan. 26 that it had sold “well over 1 million” of the devices “to date.”
Nokia also makes smartphones in Beijing and South Korea, and said Dec. 1 it will start making the Lumia 710 at its plant in Manaus, Brazil. The first shipments of Lumia handsets were made at a Compal Communications Inc. (8078) factory in Taiwan.
Nokia has nine handset factories including one under construction in Hanoi, according to its website. Last month it sold a shuttered Romanian plant to De’Longhi SpA, an Italian maker of kitchen equipment, saying the low end phones made at the plant were better produced closer to suppliers and large markets.
The Salo factory, as well as the plants in Komarom, Hungary and Reynosa, Mexico, were placed under review and could be shifted from assembly and packaging, Nokia said Sept. 29.
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