Nokia unveils final trimming plan

Finnish cell phone giant Nokia on Thursday announced its plan to further cut 300 IT jobs and transfer another 820 employees to its service partners. The decision was made in a staff meeting at Nokia's headquarters in Espoo, Finland, and Nokia IT personnel in other cities of Finland, Beijing, Chennai, London and Singapore were invited to attend the video meeting. The changes were believed to help increase operational efficiency, reduce operation costs, and create "an IT organization appropriate for Nokia's current size and scope," said the company in a statement. Last year, the company said it planned to reduce payroll costs by cutting 3,700 jobs. However, after a series of layoff actions, there were still about 1,000 posts to be identified. The announcement on Thursday was said to be the end of its overall plan. "Due to a positive prospect, Nokia cuts 300 jobs, which is 700 less than expected," a commentator said in the local radio. Similar remarks were also found in Finnish newspapers. But the Finnish public showed a rather negative attitude towards the plan and did not believe Nokia would stop cutting jobs, as the majority of the affected employees were based in Finland. A former Nokia project manager told Xinhua that the latest announcement was a part of the company's established policy, aiming to reduce its huge expenses. "It is good news for Nokia but bad news for Finland, as it is not good for the economy to recover," he said on condition of anonymity. Unemployment rate in Finland hit the highest level of nearly 10 percent in 2009 following the global financial crisis. The latest figure was 7.3 percent last November, according to Finnish statistics authorities. Nokia is a global leader in communication technologies and used to be a dominator in the international mobile phone market. Challenged by rivals like Apple and Samsung, it has been struggling for survival by releasing the series of Lumia smart phone.