Nokia will shed another 4,000 jobs from current smartphone production facilities through 2012, as it switches manufacturing to plants in Asia Pacific.
Sites in Hungary, Mexico and Finland are affected by the latest move. While the plants aren’t being closed down, their focus is switching from smartphone production to customization, making around 4,000 staff redundant.
Niklas Savander, Nokia’s executive vice president of markets, says the three sites are crucial to serving customers in the US and Europe, but notes that moving production to Asia should cut time to market for new products.
“By working more closely with our suppliers, we believe that we will be able to introduce innovations into the market more quickly and ultimately be more competitive,” he says.
The Finnish vendor announced plans to change the focus of the three production plants in September, when it revealed changes to its other manufacturing and location services teams would result in the loss of 3,500 jobs. Those losses add to around 2,300 Symbian development staff transferred to consultancy Accenture in an outsourcing deal last year.