7 ms·

Nokia to Cut 10,000 Jobs After Weak Second Quarter

63 points by sew 14y ago

iandanforth 14y ago
Having never worked in such a large company I'm always surprised at these round numbers. Is it really standard practice to pick a large round number and just start firing? Or perhaps is this the reporter favoring round numbers over accurate counts?
- jib 14y ago
  It will be an estimate. You want to do some voluntary offers over picking each guy if you can (because it is also an opportunity to get rid of demotivated/already checked out staff who you aren't aware of). Some big decisions (close area/team X), some voluntary offers, some selections on individuals. Give a rough estimate of what it will mean, announce it along the big decisions, iterate to see what happens in the voluntary area and then do extra mandatory selection cuts if needed to hit your savings target.
  - toyg 14y ago
    Also, in countries with labour-friendly laws (like Finland, I assume) there is usually a process to follow where the company has to justify the cuts, so they have to actually set target numbers.
exDM69 14y ago
If you run a tech company and are hiring, now is a good opportunity to try and hire some ex-Nokia hackers. Most of the talented ones probably took the pile of money offered in the last series of layoffs but there may be some still left. During the last series of layoffs, my company hired a whole team of Linux kernel hackers, together with the team's former manager. The guys already knew each other and were up to speed in no time.
- Tichy 14y ago
  I worked for Nokia briefly two years ago, and while they never seemed to know what to do with them, they really managed to attract very skilled people.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - Gustomaximus 14y ago
    The team on maps did a great job. I still prefer their mobile maps over the google version.
- nilsimsa 14y ago
  Where are most of the Nokia technical employees located?
saket123 14y ago
Nokia still has time to diversify (albeit not much). Every successful gadget company out their (apart from Apple, but they have IOS and MAC OS) like Samsung (windows phone, droids and some version of in house dumb phones), HTC (windows, droids) , ASUS (Windows, Droids) have diversified. Nokia's Elop is betting 122000 jobs on an OS which has 1.5 % market-share. I get that they need to make Windows Phone flagship due to investment from Microsoft but they should still think about making Android devices. I am sure with Nokia's build quality, innovation (they really own some cool technology) and Android ecosystem they will give Samsung a good run for its money and will sold far more phones then Lumia with lesser marketing cost. People who use Nokia love it for its build quality.They make good phones. Wish they don't melt away because of management politics.
glogla 14y ago
Does this mean Nokia is falling apart? I guess that mean that Microsoft's strategy (implemented with that Trojan horse guy) of "don't let them do Android even if it means destroying them" is working in a way. Then again, Nokia were the guys who popularized the paradigm of "make phones that destroy themselves if they detect non-original accessories" and they are Microsoft front now (and thus on the other side of War on general purpose computers than me), so I'm not really sad to see them leave, should that be what's actually going on.
- sid6376 14y ago
  I think this was bound to happen after the decision to hedge most of their bets on Microsoft's operating system. This need not necessarily be seen as Nokia falling apart. All the engineers working on the software side had to be let go at some point of time.
- aik 14y ago
  Absolutely not. As I mentioned in a separate comment, they still have over 100,000 employees. And they're building new factories in Asia. And their Lumia phones are best sellers in several countries. I don't think they're going anywhere yet. Edit: Nokia alone had 53k, and counting Nokia Siemens they had over 100k. Now it's -10k from Nokia.
- chappi42 14y ago
  Don't think the strategy to also-use Android as a latecomer and go against Samsung et al. without subsidies would have worked well.... The 'trojan horse guy' seems to me more like a friendly enabler for the only/most successful looking strategy left.
  - pyre 14y ago
    The fact that he's ex-Microsoft ends up looking fishy. I mean the guy leaves Microsoft to head Nokia and his first (?) major decision is to make Nokia a Microsoft shop. On the other hand, if you're constantly using hammers, then every problem can start to look like a nail (i.e. he felt that WP was the best solution because he spent a lot of time drinking the MS kool-aid, so to speak).
kqr2 14y ago
More details from Bloomberg: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-14/nokia-to-cut-10-000-jobs-as-elop-tries-to-stanch-losses.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-14/nokia-to-cut-10-000...
rbanffy 14y ago
Oddly enough, Elop and the board who hired him are not among those... In more civilized societies, they'd be expected to commit ritual suicide.
- aik 14y ago
  They still have over 100,000 employees. And they're building new factories in Asia. And their Lumia phones are best sellers in several countries. I don't think they're going anywhere yet. Edit: Could you explain why they should commit suicide? Are you saying the executive board has failed? I think it's much too early to tell.
  - BitMastro 14y ago
    It's still a whopping 10%
  - gahahaha 14y ago
    Can anybody say that the executive board hasn't failed? I don't see how Nokia could have fumbled the ball more totally than they have. The Stock price: https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=maximized&chdeh=0&chfdeh=0&chdet=1339515960000&chddm=446054&chls=IntervalBasedLine&cmpto=INDEXSP:.INX&cmptdms=0&q=NYSE:NOK&ntsp=0 https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1...
    - aik 14y ago
      They're making a long term investment with Windows Phone (WP) -- with the current plan they probably won't reach profitability for another several quarters. If the plan succeeds, Nokia will be profitable again when the point comes where WP gains a significant enough marketshare where Nokia is able to completely replace the drop in Symbian sales with WP phones (and their new cheap feature phones). If you follow the path of no-Elop, Nokia would still be investing in Symbian and Meego. Are you claiming the stock would've been better if following that path? It's very unlikely, especially if you look at the steep drop in Symbian phone sales over the past few quarters.
Jabbles 14y ago
The thought of only having two choices of mobile phone OS is disturbing. I hope that Nokia's gamble on Microsoft pays off and they keep the pressure on Apple and Google to keep things moving forward. More competition at this point can only be good for us consumers. It is, of course, sad that so many jobs will be lost. Although I can't help thinking that since Nokia no longer has to develop an entire OS, it would have quite an excess of engineers. Obviously that's only part of it.
- loudmax 14y ago
  Nokia had alternate operating system and they abandoned it. Maemo was well liked by the people who used it. It seems Nokia decided to board another company's burning ship. It's a shame to see all that engineering talent go to waste.
  - pessimizer 14y ago
    And is still well liked. My reaction to the burning platform rant was to immediately buy another N900 to leave in the box, because it may be a long time before we get another decent GNU/Linux phone. The presales on the Vivaldi tablet are giving me a bit of hope, though.
  - chappi42 14y ago
    By the _few_ people who used it... No chance at all that Maemo could have become the mainstream platform/ecosystem needed for Nokia to prosper. Uh and IIRC a lot of engineering talent was wasted with gtk/qt/meego changes. The Maemo UI (imho of course) looks boring and dated in comparision to Metro. It's a shame, yes. But it's good they not only whine but change something!
    - Tichy 14y ago
      What if there were only few users because it was rather hard to get devices and it was never really advertised outside the tech circles?
- drhowarddrfine 14y ago
pinaceae 14y ago
interesting fact about the layoffs - they have wiped out their Linux/QT team (in Ulm and other areas). Nokia has hereby given up any development Meltemi on featurephones for emerging markets ("the next billion" as they dubbed it). a bunch of their top developers already are tweeting their defeat notes. Choice blog forum post: "Meltemi product creation was in Ulm and Oulu. SW development in Espoo (UX, Linux core), Tampere (UI FW + Qt) + all Qt sites (Trolltech heritage). Over 1000 people focused on that. Nokia security working hard to ensure code does not leak outside Nokia, they already closed development enviroments and wikis this morning before announcements. By now they most propably have wiped hard drives where Meltemi code was residing." http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2012/06/brief-commentary-on-todays-nokia-bad-news-day/comments/page/1/#comment-6a00e0097e337c88330163068ee374970d http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2012/06/brief-c...
- SlipperySlope 14y ago
  Its almost like Microsoft has a mole at Nokia.
- joezydeco 14y ago
  Whoa whoa whoa...they just fired all the old Trolltech employees???
  - fghh45sdfhr3 14y ago
    I bet Digia is about to hire a lot of people.
nuje 14y ago
Rumor is they also buried Meltemi today.
SlipperySlope 14y ago
The takeaway ... "Chief Executive Stephen Elop is placing hopes of a turnaround on a new range of smartphones called Lumia, which use largely untried Microsoft Corp software. But Lumia sales have so far been slow, disappointing investors."
joverholt 14y ago
GhostIdentity 14y ago
And thus Stephen Elop becomes the Trojan Horse of modern era.
shareme 14y ago
Is this the real plan to prove MSMobiles wrong by Company Suicide? Okay, MSMobiles is an inside joke..founder was kicked out of Nokia for spying and than made a blogging career out of predicting MS Mobile success..MS Mobile success seems to be destroying their own market share for almost 10 years now..I think we see a pattern..hurry lets rewrite WinCE 5 again... yeah that will work..it worked before MS Mobile market share decreased by 20%..oh damn it wait
madoublet 14y ago
With WP7, Nokia is fighting with one hand tied behind its back. It can really only offer a handful of similar spec'd phones b/c of the platform's limitations. WP8 will allow them to do what Nokia does best and offer a wide range of products across a number of price points. So, I think it is a little premature to count them completely out. With that said, they will live or die with the WP8 launch. Personally, I hope they succeed b/c they have been doing a lot of cool things with their hardware and value added software.

63 points by sew 14y ago

Having never worked in such a large company I'm always surprised at these round numbers. Is it really standard practice to pick a large round number and just start firing? Or perhaps is this the reporter favoring round numbers over accurate counts?

jib 14y ago
It will be an estimate. You want to do some voluntary offers over picking each guy if you can (because it is also an opportunity to get rid of demotivated/already checked out staff who you aren't aware of). Some big decisions (close area/team X), some voluntary offers, some selections on individuals. Give a rough estimate of what it will mean, announce it along the big decisions, iterate to see what happens in the voluntary area and then do extra mandatory selection cuts if needed to hit your savings target.
- toyg 14y ago
  Also, in countries with labour-friendly laws (like Finland, I assume) there is usually a process to follow where the company has to justify the cuts, so they have to actually set target numbers.

exDM69 14y ago

If you run a tech company and are hiring, now is a good opportunity to try and hire some ex-Nokia hackers. Most of the talented ones probably took the pile of money offered in the last series of layoffs but there may be some still left. During the last series of layoffs, my company hired a whole team of Linux kernel hackers, together with the team's former manager. The guys already knew each other and were up to speed in no time.

Tichy 14y ago
I worked for Nokia briefly two years ago, and while they never seemed to know what to do with them, they really managed to attract very skilled people.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- Gustomaximus 14y ago
  The team on maps did a great job. I still prefer their mobile maps over the google version.
nilsimsa 14y ago
Where are most of the Nokia technical employees located?

saket123 14y ago

Nokia still has time to diversify (albeit not much). Every successful gadget company out their (apart from Apple, but they have IOS and MAC OS) like Samsung (windows phone, droids and some version of in house dumb phones), HTC (windows, droids) , ASUS (Windows, Droids) have diversified. Nokia's Elop is betting 122000 jobs on an OS which has 1.5 % market-share. I get that they need to make Windows Phone flagship due to investment from Microsoft but they should still think about making Android devices. I am sure with Nokia's build quality, innovation (they really own some cool technology) and Android ecosystem they will give Samsung a good run for its money and will sold far more phones then Lumia with lesser marketing cost. People who use Nokia love it for its build quality.They make good phones. Wish they don't melt away because of management politics.

glogla 14y ago

Does this mean Nokia is falling apart? I guess that mean that Microsoft's strategy (implemented with that Trojan horse guy) of "don't let them do Android even if it means destroying them" is working in a way. Then again, Nokia were the guys who popularized the paradigm of "make phones that destroy themselves if they detect non-original accessories" and they are Microsoft front now (and thus on the other side of War on general purpose computers than me), so I'm not really sad to see them leave, should that be what's actually going on.

sid6376 14y ago
I think this was bound to happen after the decision to hedge most of their bets on Microsoft's operating system. This need not necessarily be seen as Nokia falling apart. All the engineers working on the software side had to be let go at some point of time.
aik 14y ago
Absolutely not. As I mentioned in a separate comment, they still have over 100,000 employees. And they're building new factories in Asia. And their Lumia phones are best sellers in several countries. I don't think they're going anywhere yet. Edit: Nokia alone had 53k, and counting Nokia Siemens they had over 100k. Now it's -10k from Nokia.
chappi42 14y ago
Don't think the strategy to also-use Android as a latecomer and go against Samsung et al. without subsidies would have worked well.... The 'trojan horse guy' seems to me more like a friendly enabler for the only/most successful looking strategy left.
- pyre 14y ago
  The fact that he's ex-Microsoft ends up looking fishy. I mean the guy leaves Microsoft to head Nokia and his first (?) major decision is to make Nokia a Microsoft shop. On the other hand, if you're constantly using hammers, then every problem can start to look like a nail (i.e. he felt that WP was the best solution because he spent a lot of time drinking the MS kool-aid, so to speak).

kqr2 14y ago

More details from Bloomberg: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-14/nokia-to-cut-10-000-jobs-as-elop-tries-to-stanch-losses.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-14/nokia-to-cut-10-000...

rbanffy 14y ago

Oddly enough, Elop and the board who hired him are not among those... In more civilized societies, they'd be expected to commit ritual suicide.

aik 14y ago
They still have over 100,000 employees. And they're building new factories in Asia. And their Lumia phones are best sellers in several countries. I don't think they're going anywhere yet. Edit: Could you explain why they should commit suicide? Are you saying the executive board has failed? I think it's much too early to tell.
- BitMastro 14y ago
  It's still a whopping 10%
- gahahaha 14y ago
  Can anybody say that the executive board hasn't failed? I don't see how Nokia could have fumbled the ball more totally than they have. The Stock price: https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=maximized&chdeh=0&chfdeh=0&chdet=1339515960000&chddm=446054&chls=IntervalBasedLine&cmpto=INDEXSP:.INX&cmptdms=0&q=NYSE:NOK&ntsp=0 https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1...
  - aik 14y ago
    They're making a long term investment with Windows Phone (WP) -- with the current plan they probably won't reach profitability for another several quarters. If the plan succeeds, Nokia will be profitable again when the point comes where WP gains a significant enough marketshare where Nokia is able to completely replace the drop in Symbian sales with WP phones (and their new cheap feature phones). If you follow the path of no-Elop, Nokia would still be investing in Symbian and Meego. Are you claiming the stock would've been better if following that path? It's very unlikely, especially if you look at the steep drop in Symbian phone sales over the past few quarters.

Jabbles 14y ago

The thought of only having two choices of mobile phone OS is disturbing. I hope that Nokia's gamble on Microsoft pays off and they keep the pressure on Apple and Google to keep things moving forward. More competition at this point can only be good for us consumers. It is, of course, sad that so many jobs will be lost. Although I can't help thinking that since Nokia no longer has to develop an entire OS, it would have quite an excess of engineers. Obviously that's only part of it.

loudmax 14y ago
Nokia had alternate operating system and they abandoned it. Maemo was well liked by the people who used it. It seems Nokia decided to board another company's burning ship. It's a shame to see all that engineering talent go to waste.
- pessimizer 14y ago
  And is still well liked. My reaction to the burning platform rant was to immediately buy another N900 to leave in the box, because it may be a long time before we get another decent GNU/Linux phone. The presales on the Vivaldi tablet are giving me a bit of hope, though.
- chappi42 14y ago
  By the _few_ people who used it... No chance at all that Maemo could have become the mainstream platform/ecosystem needed for Nokia to prosper. Uh and IIRC a lot of engineering talent was wasted with gtk/qt/meego changes. The Maemo UI (imho of course) looks boring and dated in comparision to Metro. It's a shame, yes. But it's good they not only whine but change something!
  - Tichy 14y ago
    What if there were only few users because it was rather hard to get devices and it was never really advertised outside the tech circles?
drhowarddrfine 14y ago

pinaceae 14y ago

interesting fact about the layoffs - they have wiped out their Linux/QT team (in Ulm and other areas). Nokia has hereby given up any development Meltemi on featurephones for emerging markets ("the next billion" as they dubbed it). a bunch of their top developers already are tweeting their defeat notes. Choice blog forum post: "Meltemi product creation was in Ulm and Oulu. SW development in Espoo (UX, Linux core), Tampere (UI FW + Qt) + all Qt sites (Trolltech heritage). Over 1000 people focused on that. Nokia security working hard to ensure code does not leak outside Nokia, they already closed development enviroments and wikis this morning before announcements. By now they most propably have wiped hard drives where Meltemi code was residing." http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2012/06/brief-commentary-on-todays-nokia-bad-news-day/comments/page/1/#comment-6a00e0097e337c88330163068ee374970d http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2012/06/brief-c...

SlipperySlope 14y ago
Its almost like Microsoft has a mole at Nokia.
joezydeco 14y ago
Whoa whoa whoa...they just fired all the old Trolltech employees???
- fghh45sdfhr3 14y ago
  I bet Digia is about to hire a lot of people.

nuje 14y ago

Rumor is they also buried Meltemi today.

SlipperySlope 14y ago

The takeaway ... "Chief Executive Stephen Elop is placing hopes of a turnaround on a new range of smartphones called Lumia, which use largely untried Microsoft Corp software. But Lumia sales have so far been slow, disappointing investors."

joverholt 14y ago

GhostIdentity 14y ago

And thus Stephen Elop becomes the Trojan Horse of modern era.

shareme 14y ago

Is this the real plan to prove MSMobiles wrong by Company Suicide? Okay, MSMobiles is an inside joke..founder was kicked out of Nokia for spying and than made a blogging career out of predicting MS Mobile success..MS Mobile success seems to be destroying their own market share for almost 10 years now..I think we see a pattern..hurry lets rewrite WinCE 5 again... yeah that will work..it worked before MS Mobile market share decreased by 20%..oh damn it wait

madoublet 14y ago

With WP7, Nokia is fighting with one hand tied behind its back. It can really only offer a handful of similar spec'd phones b/c of the platform's limitations. WP8 will allow them to do what Nokia does best and offer a wide range of products across a number of price points. So, I think it is a little premature to count them completely out. With that said, they will live or die with the WP8 launch. Personally, I hope they succeed b/c they have been doing a lot of cool things with their hardware and value added software.