It hasn’t even been a year since Nokia announced the restructuring of its India operations and now Nokia is again in the news for layoffs. In February this year, the feature phone and smartphone manufacturer, underwent significant changes in its operations within India. This transformation had reportedly affected 250 positions. The restructuring was aimed at achieving cost savings and ensuring sustained profitability. Now, with the same intention, the company is letting go 20 per cent of its team in Greater China, that is, almost 2,000 employees. That isn’t all; it intends to let go 350 of its team members across Europe too, say media reports. Gross savings of about 500 million euros are already being reported.
At the end of 2023, the company reportedly had 10,400 employees in Greater China and 37,400 in Europe.
The layoffs do not come as a shock because the company had revealed intentions to trim its workforce by 14,000 to cut costs earlier too. It is looking to save 800 million euros ($868 million) to 1.2 billion euros by 2026. Clearly, its cost-cutting measures have not been in vain. The company reported a nine per cent hike in operating profit in Q3.
In terms of sales, however, Nokia’s performance wasn’t up to the mark. While Greater China accounted for about 27 per cent of Nokia’s sales in 2019, that figure has been reduced drastically to less than six per cent now over a span of about four years! That means, China is no longer an attractive market for Nokia, whereas it was once its second largest.
