The reductions bring Nokia’s total job cuts to over 2,300 following over 1,700 jobs lost earlier this year. It has often explained these as necessary due to the economy but is partly mirroring its own struggle to compete,” Electronista reports.
“It has lost smartphone market share and is generating less profit than Apple despite selling roughly ten times or more phones each quarter,” Electronista reports. “Most of Nokia’s cellphone sales now skew towards inexpensive devices and are rarely as profitable as the iPhone.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Stick a fork in them, Nokia’s done.
We’ve had one of these before, when the dot-com bubble burst. What I told our company was that we were just going to invest our way through the downturn, that we weren’t going to lay off people, that we’d taken a tremendous amount of effort to get them into Apple in the first place — the last thing we were going to do is lay them off. And we were going to keep funding. In fact we were going to up our R&D budget so that we would be ahead of our competitors when the downturn was over. And that’s exactly what we did. And it worked. And that’s exactly what we’ll do this time. – Apple CEO Steve Jobs, February 2008
“skew towards inexpensive devices”
But the world does need bottom-feeders.
Way to go Nokia, when times are rough instead of doubling up on R&D;, go cutting it…
No wonder you’re late to the smartphone picnic..
Sad to see bosses who don’t get it! (Whoa! Did I say that? LOL! Well, it is sad and so many don’t get it!)
Cut the sales force and the bean counters before the creative people.
Reminds me of the shop down the street. Big sign in the window: “CLOSED UNTIL BUSINESS PICKS UP”.
330 R&D;jobs? what does that means “R&D;” for Nokia? I know that is “Research and Development” for Apple, but I don’t think Nokia or Microsft has a department for that since they just copy and modify their products..
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@ Troy
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Don’t be silly,
You have to Research the original & Develop the copy
Perhaps it stands for Reproduce and Duplicate?
It’s like slashing your wrists to lower your blood pressure.
There you go. Freekin’ genius! Cut the people who can bring you out of the hole you dug yourself into.
No R&D;means crappy new products. What are you people smoking?
Goodbye Nokia! Good riddance!
Idiots!
@Another Irish Dude and the rest:
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Good interpretation
“Nokia’s cellphone sales now skew towards inexpensive devices and are rarely as profitable as the iPhone.”
That’s it! Follow the example of Dell, that always works!
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Most OEMs now rely on R&D by Google.
Man, I love that Steve Jobs quote.
Their research staff haven’t done them that much good the last few years. On the other hand, the first ones that should be fired are Nokia’s CEO and other senior management. Of course, the board are mostly his buddies, and they only hear his spin on matters.
Wow. When innovation is at its lowest, cut R&D;!!!!
No need for R & D. Just copy Apple.
@cptnkirk
What makes you think there are any creative types at Nokia? From what I see, they need to cut the dead wood in creative until something actually creative comes out.
Reality, if you don’t have an idea guy at the top driving innovation and passion, don’t look for it to come from the R&D;guys.
@Ian
Having that 10+ and 30+ billion in cash in the bank with no debt at each of those economic junctures allows an organization like Apple the flexibility to actually do the right thing, when other companies have to cut like crazy to make their debt covenants Apple can continue to invest and follow its strategies (Yea a Company that actually has strategies isn’t that rare) to success.
R&D;??? Nokia has R&D;?
Last I checked, Nokia has over 200 cell phone models listed on Cnet, not to mention they can’t seem to decide on an OS.
200 models, 200!
They really have some serious issues.
“Most of Nokia’s cellphone sales now skew towards inexpensive devices and are rarely as profitable as the iPhone.”
That is “rarely” in the sense of “none.” The whole family of Nokia phones is not as profitable as the iPhone, meaning that no single Nokia device is as profitable seeing as Nokia is “…generating less profit than Apple despite selling roughly ten times or more phones each quarter…”
It’s a shame because Nokia makes some of the best phones (not smartphones, just basic cell phones) out there. They’re durable, simple, and just freakin’ work…
There will always be a market for “dumb” phones just like there will always be a market for dialup (well, at least in the mid-term future anyway). Not everyone wants or needs an iPhone (I know, perish the thought) or 25Mb/s internet. If NOKIA’s gonna survive, they will have to simplify their business, re-focus on the basics that they do well and stop chasing the iPhone down the winding path into the woods. Cutting R&D;might be the right way if it’s part of that strategy.
Chasing the iPhone is a losing battle — all these companies have tried and they’ve all ended up sucking. All the haters out there are like “I just got my pre!” and then 2 days later, facebook is like “I just got my replacement pre!” and then 4 days later…..