Nokia plans furloughs in Finland next year

Nokia plans to temporarily cut around 400 jobs next year at its only plant in Finland. The firm says that because of the current market conditions, it does not need to operate at full capacity.
A company spokeswoman told Reuters that the furloughs--lasting up to 90 days--would affect 20 percent of the roughly 2,000 workers at Nokia's plant in Salo, the last major handset plant in Western Europe. "In this market situation, taking into account usual seasonality, at this point we see no need for full capacity," the spokeswoman said.
The plant focuses mainly on advanced devices, and the announcement comes less than two weeks after Nokia said it will cut the number of smartphones it releases next year roughly in half.
"Nokia's furloughs at Salo are a clear symptom of the brutal pricing environment vendors are facing," MKM Partners analyst Pablo Perez-Fernandez told Reuters. "The company needs to do everything possible to protect profit margins, and Finland is relatively expensive."
In the past few weeks Nokia also has slashed close to 600 research-and-development jobs in locations across the globe, partly due to its plans to slim down its global handset portfolio in a bid to focus on fewer, flashier phones.
For more:- see this Reuters article
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