back to article Nokia axes 4,000, shifts smartphone manufacturing East

Having reviewed operations at its manufacturing facilities in Hungary, Mexico and Finland, Nokia has decided to halt its assembly lines there. Smartphones will still be customised at the three sites, but the gear itself will be built in Asia. The change will affect 4,000 jobs between the factories – loading custom firmware …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Mage Silver badge
    Trollface

    Prior Art

    Apple will sue for copying the Manufacturing Chain?

  2. Wang N Staines
    Trollface

    Welcome to Elop & MS ways of doing biz.

    1. Giles Jones Gold badge

      Looks like standard business practice, everyone else "does it this way" and so we must do it too. He'll get a big bonus for implementing it too.

      1. twilkins

        "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM"

        And now nobody ever got fired for offshoring jobs to Asia.

        Well, I say nobody, except the factory workers in Euope and America and then eventually even the executives of Nokia as nobody can afford their product.

  3. Roger Greenwood

    ". . .often-more-relaxed attitude to . ."

    Health & Safety Law is more like it.

  4. Neil 7

    You don't need so many factories when building WP7 devices

    After all, nobody is buying whatever Nokia manages to make - all the Symbian owners are running hell for leather towards Android manufacturers after the idiot in charge took a dump on the Symbian platform that was keeping the company afloat and still had at least 2 years life left in it before anything was likely to replace it.

    Also funny how BlackBerry announced yesterday at BB Dev Con that Qt would be at the very heart of the BlackBerry 10 platform. So that's the Qt write-once-run-everywhere "ecosystem" available for every platform - Windows/Mac/Linux desktops, Symbian, MeeGo, Tizen, BlackBerry, Android, iOS, Raspberry-Pi - but one. Yep, Windows Phone 7.

    Genius, Elop & Nokia. You almost had it all, but will end up with nothing.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      running hell for leather towards Android?

      I'm a Symbian stalwart who has to code for Android at work, and I'll be running hell for leather AWAY from that Frankenstein's monster of a platform.

      The Symbian platform didn't actually have a "best before" date... it was Nokia's crap S60 UI that needed to be put on the compost heap. Maddeningly, the Belle UI is excellent.

      Great to hear that BlackBerry are adopting Qt. I wish Nokia/Digia would get their arses in gear and *officially* support Qt for iOS, Android etc. As for Windows Phone 7, it's not even possible to get a Qt port working...

      1. introiboad

        I doubt that Qt for iOS and WP7 will ever happen. Those OSs already have their own UI frameworks.

        Symbian (kernel and base) could've lived longer no doubt, but long term I think it was not viable vs Linux/NT/Darwin kernels.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Qt for iOS exists today

          It's already a reality - there are already Qt-based apps available in the Apple App Store. Same for Android.

          Qt is now the most cross-platform mobile development framework after HTML5, and the only cross-platform framework capable of supporting native code development. If you're a switched on developer and want to target all platforms with a native app (not HTML5) then Qt really is the only choice.

          MeeGo-Harmattan was the obvious replacement for Symbian in the longer term, and having used an N9 there's no reason Nokia could not have succeeded with MeeGo and Symbian both using Qt and trading market share gradually over the next few years. Nokia with Qt really did - for the first time in a long while - have a compelling software strategy for the future. Instead Elop traded the whole lot for single digit market share and no control over the companies destiny - they're just a Microsoft ODM now.

      2. /\/\j17
        Stop

        "...the Belle UI is excellent."

        It is?

        With the upgrade release yesterday I upgraded my E7 last night and...have been trying to find out how I go back to Anna ever since.

        Excellence must mean "making everything bigger so it takes up more space and loosing/obfuscating useful functionality".

    2. Bob Vistakin
      Unhappy

      Elop end up with nothing? Come off it, once he completes the assignment Ballmer sent him on he'll scurry back to Redmond to count his shares.

  5. wilfman

    Needed to be done.

    Nokia needs to restructure to be successful and this makes total sense. As an employee affected by the recent spate of redundancies, whilst obviously not happy about being made redundant, the level of support they are providing to those affected is, in my opinion, top notch. Show me other companies that offer 8 months effective salary + 2 months support on full pay + training + grants to start up new businesses and learn new skills all to someone who is been there only 18 months.....

    1. Muckminded

      Grats on the severance

      But, the redundancies are higher up than the employee level. They are at the platform level. If you are moving on, then good luck and good thinking.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Sorry State Of Europe

    The fact that even factories in lower-wage hungary have to close down, does not shed a good light upon Europe. Most of southern and eastern Europe is in deep economic trouble, but still China is more competitive ? That clearly means we will see some very ugly economic news in the next couple of years.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "but still China is more competitive ? "

      No, European managers *believe* China/Asia is more competitive.

      There's a difference. Modern global economy is largely a belief system.

  7. Avatar of They
    FAIL

    Its been coming a long time. Since MS took over actually.

    Wall meet writing. writing meet wall.

  8. David Black
    Unhappy

    And there goes the build quality

    Sadly about the only thing that still distinguished Nokia was solid build quality of the hardware and they are now chucking that away. Me-to software and me-to hardware... not for me any more I'm afraid :(

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Shit software + shit hardware =

      doomed products.

      Nokia were already on life support, after adopting the doomed Windows Phone OS.

  9. what_fresh_hell_is_this?

    retreat to the East

    This puts me in mind of the Soviets uprooting their factories and moving them to the East during the Second World War.

    As I recall, once the Soviets had had time to lick their wounds and reorganise, they were able to march unstoppably Westward to reclaim their lost territories, and even gain more.

    I wonder if the story will be similar for Nokia?

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    it's all going

    brilliantly to plan!!!

    1. Philip Lewis
      Pint

      Microkia

      The grand master (Ballmer) plan

  11. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    And here I was

    Waiting for Jim or any other ----censured under rule 7----- to come and tell us why this is a great move for Nokia, WP7 and the consumers!

    As many have posted before, Nokia had a winner with the N9 with Meego/Harmatan, and with QT had a great strategy. The N9 is selling more globally than the over-hyped Lumias, and without any kind of publicity. A CEO working for the better of its company would have seen by now it was time to change strategy, but Elop keeps destroying everything that can be used as an advantage by Nokia. What he has done isn't yet enough to get him arrested, if not for corporate sabotage, at least for criminal incompetence? Or will the EU and the Finnish government wait until MS tries to buy the remains of Nokia for a few cents? The patents are already being fostered on a patent troll, the factories are being dismantled, the platforms are abandoned, selling systems are disdained and crappy, unsellable ones are pushed as the way forward, isn't that enough damning evidence?

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like