Nokia will be giving more of its team members pink slips in 2012. In a press release today, the smartphone company revealed its plans to make changes at its mobile phone factories located in Komarom, Hungary, Reynosa, Mexico and Salo, Finland. The changes will result in the layoffs of 4,000 Nokia team members by the end of the year. These layoffs are in addition to the ones that Nokia first announced in September 2011 when it revealed that 3,500 of its workers would be given their walking papers.
Nokia said today that the three factories in Hungary, Mexico and Finland will now focus their energies on smartphone product customization for countries located in Europe and the Americas. The actual device assembly work will be transferred over to factories located in Asia.
According to Nokia"s executive vice president Niklas Savander:
Shifting device assembly to Asia is targeted at improving our time to market. 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. We recognize the planned changes are difficult for our employees and we are committed to supporting our personnel and their local communities during the transition.
This latest news follows word in January that Nokia lost another $1.2 billion in the fourth quarter of 2011 as the company tries to regain its once high status in the mobile phone industry via its recently launched Lumia line of Windows Phone-based smartphones.