Nokia industrial area in Finland. At one point the Nokia phone brand was the biggest on the planet with a 40pc market share
Microsoft has confirmed 1,350 jobs at the former Nokia smartphone unit in Finland are to go as part of a wider 1,850 cull as Microsoft exits the phone-making business.
Microsoft revealed recently that it had to add a further $1bn in impairment charges to its doomed acquisition of Nokia’s mobile phone business and would cut 1,850 jobs.
It confirmed today (11 July) that 1,350 of those job cuts will occur in Finland, the home of Nokia.
In effect, this signifies the near end of the mobile phone legacy of Nokia in Finland.
Most of the redundancies are to be carried out immediately, after negotiations.
The redundancies should be completed in the course of next year, Microsoft announced.
Some of those affected will have the opportunity to move on to work at the company headquarters in Redmond in the US in Microsoft’s other units.
Hero to zero: the decline of the world’s biggest mobile phone brand
Old Nokia phone image via Shutterstock
A decade ago, Nokia was Finland’s finest export business. What began as a lumber company more than a century earlier was the biggest mobile phone brand on the planet with a 40pc market share.
And then the iPhone happened and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer famously laughed off the Apple device because it had one button.
Within a few years, Microsoft was backpedalling and fixed upon the bold idea of buying Nokia for $7.2bn in 2013 when Nokia itself was almost bankrupt.
However, the investment didn’t work out for Microsoft and it emerged that the software giant announced impairment charges of $7.6bn and announced 7,800 in job cuts in its smartphone group as part of a corporate restructure involving 18,000 job losses.
In May, it emerged that Microsoft added a further $1bn to the write-off and announced 1,850 more layoffs with 1,350 of those layoffs happening within the former Nokia divisions it acquired.
Nokia industrial area image via Shutterstock
