Nokia closes last Finnish plant amid sweeping job cuts
Once dominant cellphone maker Nokia on Friday shuttered the doors to its last remaining manufacturing plant in Finland as part of ongoing plans to cut overhead.
After discussing the plant shutdown with union representatives, Nokia closed its last home-country plant in Salo, Finland and reiterated plans to ax 3,700 jobs, reports Reuters.
Nokia first announced it would close the plant in June alongside plans to cut 10,000 jobs worldwide by the close of 2013. In the same release, the company also said it would close research and development facilities in Burnaby, Canada and Ulm, Germany.
Once a market-leader in smartphone sales, Nokia's share has dwindled as Apple's iOS and Google's Android capture an ever-larger piece of the global market in what has become a two-horse OS race. While still a top player, shipments of handsets running Nokia's defunct Symbian operating system dropped some 60 percent in the first quarter of 2012 and overall sales continue to waiver as the company moves to Microsoft's Windows Phone platform.
Nokia is banking on strong sales of its Lumia 900 Windows Phone.
Production at the Salo plant, considered the last major cellphone manufacturing site in western Europe, has already ceased meaning the factory's 780 workers will lose their jobs sometime this year.
After discussing the plant shutdown with union representatives, Nokia closed its last home-country plant in Salo, Finland and reiterated plans to ax 3,700 jobs, reports Reuters.
Nokia first announced it would close the plant in June alongside plans to cut 10,000 jobs worldwide by the close of 2013. In the same release, the company also said it would close research and development facilities in Burnaby, Canada and Ulm, Germany.
Once a market-leader in smartphone sales, Nokia's share has dwindled as Apple's iOS and Google's Android capture an ever-larger piece of the global market in what has become a two-horse OS race. While still a top player, shipments of handsets running Nokia's defunct Symbian operating system dropped some 60 percent in the first quarter of 2012 and overall sales continue to waiver as the company moves to Microsoft's Windows Phone platform.
Nokia is banking on strong sales of its Lumia 900 Windows Phone.
Production at the Salo plant, considered the last major cellphone manufacturing site in western Europe, has already ceased meaning the factory's 780 workers will lose their jobs sometime this year.
Comments
So sad...
I guess that means they may not be around as long as predicted in the recent Star Trek movie?
I don't remember Nokia being in the Star Trek. Now I have to watch that again.
edit: Now I remember. http://www.symbian-freak.com/news/009/05/next_nokia_touch_device_revealed_in_the_star_trek_movie.htm
Quote:
Originally Posted by SolipsismX
I don't remember Nokia being in the Star Trek. Now I have to watch that again.
edit: Now I remember. http://www.symbian-freak.com/news/009/05/next_nokia_touch_device_revealed_in_the_star_trek_movie.htm
It was...
I can only feel bad for everyone that worked under the leaders of this company that ran them into joblessness.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SolipsismX
I don't remember Nokia being in the Star Trek. Now I have to watch that again.
edit: Now I remember. http://www.symbian-freak.com/news/009/05/next_nokia_touch_device_revealed_in_the_star_trek_movie.htm
I remembered it mainly because it annoyed me that they would even attempt product placement in a Trek film. How many brands are we exposed to on a daily basis that have been around more than 100 years? Coke? A variety of banks?
http://shanghai.cultural-china.com/html/City-Beats/City-Feature/201009/09-6699.html
Maybe they should've used some Chinese brands instead?
They gotta make money. I just hate when the placement detracts from the film. I remember the excessive focus on the branding but it wasn't as egregious as it could have been and was in a classic car, not on the bridge of the Enterprise. The worst is what they are doing in TV shows these days. Bones is the worst. Whenever they do a placement is pulls you out of the show and feels like it was directed, shot, written by a completely different set of people. Bones even had an entire episode revolve around the opening of Avatar.
PS: ST:TNG season 1 remaster for Blu-ray as of this week.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SolipsismX
They gotta make money. I just hate when the placement detracts from the film. I remember the excessive focus on the branding but it wasn't as egregious as it could have been and was in a classic car, not on the bridge of the Enterprise. The worst is what they are doing in TV shows these days. Bones is the worst. Whenever they do a placement is pulls you out of the show and feels like it was directed, shot, written by a completely different set of people. Bones even had an entire episode revolve around the opening of Avatar.
PS: ST:TNG season 1 remaster for Blu-ray as of this week.
I think they should simply cease with commercial breaks for broadcast television and have continuous programming with the products worked into the storyline and background. As long as it doesn't detract to a sickening degree from the story, why not? Besides, I refuse to watch most broadcast TV.
With the way tech is moving they just might. Ever notice that at the end of a gameshow they note who provided the wardrobe? Imagine that if you're watching anything you can pause it and have a list of items on screen with descriptions, prices and where to buy with links. A jacket, a couch, etc. It's Fahrenheit 451... now we just need to burn all the books.
The thing is on a lot of shows the plugs are just extra money for the studio.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SpamSandwich
I guess that means they may not be around as long as predicted in the recent Star Trek movie?
Funny you should bring that up. I was watching a James Bond movie last night, and the most prominent product placement? Ericsson. To think that these companies once bestrode the telecom backbone and handset worlds.... and not that long ago! Wow.
Also tells us that these movie product placements amount to a hill of beans.
Quote:
Originally Posted by blackbook
So sad for the workers. Essentially they can thank big companies like Apple and Google for moving th majority of phone manufacturing jobs to 3rd world nations.
Uh... that's how they will get rich. You've got something against poor people bettering their lives by working harder, cheaper?
Quote:
Originally Posted by blackbook
So sad for the workers. Essentially they can thank big companies like Apple and Google for moving th majority of phone manufacturing jobs to 3rd world nations.
Shouldn't they be thanking Nokia's incompetent management, who did absolutely nothing to address new market realities?
Quote:
Originally Posted by DaveGee
I'm guessing we gotta wait for that Microsoft advantage to kick in eh?
So sad...
It is sad. They just can't compete at the high end, and that seems to be where a lot of the profit resides.
Their decision to tie their high end to WinPhone 7 seems like a blunder at this point.
They are now trying to hang on long enough to see if they get any new life with Windows 8 on their phones. Good luck with that. I wouldn't count out Windows on phones yet, but it is getting increasingly difficult not to. It boggles the mind that Microsoft once had a huge cellphone business, and that they have squandered their former position.
And in the meantime, Nokia is going down for the count.
Nokia is dead. Nokia can't survive to end of year. Why to these folks lie? How do you close your last manufacturing plant, and then say you're cutting overhead. Overhead are the leaders of Nokia and their cronies. Their manufacturing plant is the only portion of their company that is NOT overhead.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bigdaddyp
I didn't mind it so much when Chuck did the constant subway plugs. Without it we most likely wouldn't have had the last two seasons.
The thing is on a lot of shows the plugs are just extra money for the studio.
One of the few shows I do watch is "30 Rock" and it was amusing to see them sort of attack Subway in one episode.
When the EU and the US go under all the Chinese people that left their farms to work in factories are going to lose everything too.
Whoever brought the intellectually-challenged Elop onboard should be in jail now...NOKIA is a goner.
Quote:
Originally Posted by waldobushman
Nokia is dead. Nokia can't survive to end of year. Why to these folks lie? How do you close your last manufacturing plant, and then say you're cutting overhead. Overhead are the leaders of Nokia and their cronies. Their manufacturing plant is the only portion of their company that is NOT overhead.
Nokia doesn't just make phones. It also makes wireless infrastructure ( http://www.nokiasiemensnetworks.com/portfolio/products )
Nokia squandered their position when they were ahead, and then repeatedly did nothing to adjust to market forces (look how long it took for a flip phone, when Americans were demanding flip phones.) Also take a look at flubs like the n-Gage.
Also look at RIM. Failure to adjust to market forces.
What we had, before Apple came along and ate everyone's lunch, was a market of dumb phones, expensive "Java2ME" slow devices that nobody wanted to develop software for. Microsoft's Windows CE/Mobile and Palm devices that had to be synced to get your software onto it. Apple changed all this, and now no PC needs to be involved. But it's not Apple that changed it, it's Apple's agreement with AT&T Wireless that changed the game. If data was still being charged at 5 cents a KB and data plans with a pittance of a data cap, the Apple iPhone wouldn't have succeeded, because it would have been nothing more than a "iPod that can place calls"
The Chinese counterfeits were very quick to try and copy the iPhone design to trick people looking for iPhones, but they were also knocking off the N95. This was the same year that Nokia was selling the N95 which had far superior specifications. Yet the iPhone succeeded and became the market leader because it wasn't just another dumb phone with no software. It's been downhill for Nokia and RIM ever since.