Nokia to sack 330 R&D staff, reduce new launches

Finland's Nokia Corp, the world's largest mobile phone maker, said on Friday it will cut up to 330 jobs in Finland and Denmark in order to align its research and development operations with its focused portfolio of future products. 

Up to 230 employees at the Oulu site in Finland and around 100 employees at the Copenhagen site in Denmark will be affected, Nokia said, adding that the job cuts will represent around 2 per cent of its global R&D staff. 

Nokia said it will start consultations with employee representatives about the plans, and added it aims to support the affected employees with alternative solutions such as finding new positions within the company. 

The company has around 17,000 employees in the research and development division, of which more than 2,000 are in Oulu and over 1,000 are based in Copenhagen. 

The world's top cellphone maker has been launching around 50 models per year, but now aims to focus on fewer, more popular models, a spokesman said.

In the third quarter of 2009, Nokia reported an operating loss of 426 million euros. It had posted an operating profit of 1.5 billion euros in the year-ago period.