Nokia to lay off up to 330 R&D staffers

Nokia said Friday that a streamlining effort could result in the elimination of as many as 330 positions from its research and development staff, or about 2 percent of its global R&D workforce.

Microelectronics research at Nokia.

(Credit: NOkia)

The changes will likely hit up to 230 workers in the company's Oulu site in Finland and roughly 100 at its Copenhagen site. Nokia said it plans to offer voluntary severance packages to the affected workers and to find alternative jobs for as many people as possible.

The company currently employs more than 17,000 workers in its R&D business. It has 2,000 employees at the Oulu facility and 1,000 in Copenhagen.

Though Nokia still holds the top spot in the smartphone arena, its dominance has been eroded by competition from the likes of Apple and Research In Motion. A recent In-Stat report found that Nokia's share of the smartphone market had dropped to 35 percent in this year's second quarter compared with 50 percent in the prior year's quarter.

Another report from Strategy Analytics revealed that Apple had surpassed Nokia in cell phone profits during the third quarter, the first time that Nokia had fallen to second place.

Nokia's third-quarter results showed a net loss of $832 million, while sales dropped around 20 percent. Nokia Siemens, the network equipment maker run by Nokia and Siemens, has also been a drag on its owners, recently announcing its own layoffs and cost cuts as a result of its weak performance.

[Chao_Sama]

A bad look

[slickuser]

They should lay of their executives and managers for this mess

[WinNoMo]

A company losing ground due to a lack of innovation should not be laying off R&D. Rest in peace Nokia.

[weegg]

Yep, their executives should go, considering the rash of wrong decisions they made. Nokia is sort of mirroring what is happening with MS (Balmer should go).

[codynews]

***, I wouldn't have even thought Nokia *HAD* 330 R&#38;D guys. And that's 2 PERCENT of their R&#38;D staff?<br /><br />That's what, like 16 THOUSAND R&#38;D people? HUH?<br /><br />And they can't best the iphone still. Sad

[codynews]

hmm... I wonder what I said to get the "**" I don't even remember? Maybe "dam" (with an 'n') ?<br /><br />testing: damn

[codynews]

grrr! now I have no idea *** I said

[foobaz]

You have to consider the fact that Nokia/NSN is one of the biggest players, if not still *the* biggest one doing the actual hard development of future phone radio technologies and standards. In that regard Apple is just freeloading - and apparently in Nokia's opinion, even more than just letting others do the development.<br /><br />It is interesting to see how Maemo and future Symbian developments (very intensely revamped, really) fare on handset side, but it's hard to claim that Apple wouldn't start facing real competition soon. Real mystery is how Google and Nokia are going to fare in relation to each other on the segment where they need to challenge Apple monoculturists...

[codynews]

ah ha! its "double U tee eff" that gets the *** treatment.

[SpeedPsycho]

That is a rediculous number of R&#38;D if that's true.. haha.<br /><br />"grrr! now I have no idea *** I said" lol<br /><br />But in all seriousness, last stats I saw Nokia is the single most popular phone brand outside of the US. It's somewhat surprising considering their ghostly nature in the USA... but they know their stuff, and they've got some awesome products that definitely trounces the iPhone for those who appreciate good hardware... they just aren't hip in the USA anymore. It's too bad.

[smithjones]

@ codynews<br /><br />Maybe you should use it backwards? : ) ftw<br /><br />17,000 R&#38;D? my god, are they redoing the Manhattan project? Even they didn't have that many.

[artistjoh]

On the face of it a company losing ground due to innovation from new competitors has to be nuts to lay off R&#38;D staff but lets think about this. <br /><br />16,000 R&#38;D people end up with Nokia smart phones that only looked good in the years before the iPhone. In the iPhone era is has become obvious that despite Zeiss lenses and every feature you could poke a stick at their phones are not easy to use and the features don't always work well and all those buttons that clutter their phones tend to stop working after a year or so. I am in a country where Nokia was huge before the iPhone but now I see more iPhones than Nokia's and for very good reason.<br /><br />When 16,000 R&#38;D people cannot work out that a phone should be as reliable as an iPhone, should be as easy to use as an iPhone, and should have an App Store as good or better than the iPhone then perhaps they should sack all 16,000 and bring in a new crew with the ability to see the obvious and then start really innovating and create a user experience that users really want.