Nokia cuts more than a thousand jobs in Finland

Nokia is cutting 1,032 jobs in Finland as part of a cost-cutting program following its acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent, the telecom network equipment maker said in a statement. Finland’s biggest company has cut thousands of jobs in its home country over the past decade as its once-dominant phone business was eclipsed by the rise of smartphone rivals.

Nokia started the latest cost cutting program in April and is targeting 900 million euros ($1 billion) of operating cost synergies from the Alcatel deal by 2018. The company has declined to give an overall figure for global job cuts, but has said it in talks with employee representatives in about 30 countries.

Nokia employs about 104,000 people worldwide, with about 6,850 in Finland, 4,800 in Germany and 4,200 in France.

Recently, the company revealed that the Nokia brand of phones are making a comeback in the market. Microsoft recently announced it had reached an agreement to spin off its entry level smartphone devices to a FIH Mobile Ltd which is a subsidiary of Foxconn Technology Group and HMD Global. HMD will acquire the rights to use the Nokia brand on its products over a period of 10 years.

While Nokia will not be investing in HMD, HMD will be paying Nokia royalties for using its brand name, patents, software and other properties. Nokia Technologies will be on the board of directors for the newly formed company. This is a way for Nokia to assure its customers that consumers will get the same experience and value from these new products, as they would have gotten from a Nokia device. Microsoft will meanwhile continue to manufacture its Lumia series of phones, as well as Windows Mobile.

With inputs from Reuters