Asides

Nokia lays off 320, closes R&D plant…

Nokia has issues a statement that in order to “adapt to the market situation, Nokia today announced plans to close its mobile devices R&D site in Jyväskylä, concentrating mobile devices R&D in Finland at its sites in Tampere, Oulu, Salo and the Helsinki metropolitan area. Nokia also plans to scale down Salo production with staggered temporary lay-offs, aligning production with market demand while continuing operations without interruption.”

So for the 320 employees in Jyväskylä will be starting to look for new work as the plans are to officially shut it down by the end of 2009.

Even though the location has helped Nokia create a number of “hit products”, Peter Røpke, Senior Vice President, Devices R&D, Nokia said: “Our employees in Jyväskylä are highly competent and have contributed to the creation of numerous hit products. The planned closure of the Jyväskylä site is an unfortunate, yet unavoidable measure. We must adjust our resources to reflect reduced market demand in order to maintain our competitiveness also in the future”.

In addition, down the road in Salo, Finland, Nokia will also slow down production and start to “implement temporary lay-offs on a rotational basis, with operations at the factory continuing without downtime.” with approximately 20 – 30% out of approximately 2 500 employees being temporarily laid off at a time.

Juha Putkiranta, Senior Vice President, Demand Supply Network Management, Nokia said “With these plans, we aim to scale down Salo production to reflect reduced market demand, while operations in the factory continue uninterrupted. This is one of the measures we are taking to adjust our global demand supply network to the current situation.”

Full Press Release here