I’m sure you know that Nokia isn’t the same company it was a few years ago when Nokia was at the top of the mobile space, and it appears that Nokia is now feeling that business downturn, as the company has now announced that the reports of Nokia offloading their luxury smartphone firm Vertu have turned out to be right on the mark.
According to the guys over at Slash Gear, Nokia has now announced that they are selling Vertu to private equity firm EQT, with the deal closing in the 2nd half of 2012, and Nokia will retain a 10 percent stake in Vertu, although the final sum of the deal wasn’t announced.
Nokia has apparently also announced that they are to lose roughly 10,000 jobs before the end of 2013, and as such, part of those cuts, plants in Finland, Canada and Germany will be closed, as Nokia attempts ‘sharpening its strategy’ so they can again attempt to make money.
Nokia president and CEO Stephen Elop said, “We intend to pursue an even more focused effort on Lumia, continued innovation around our feature phones, while placing increased emphasis on our location-based services. However, we must re-shape our operating model and ensure that we create a structure that can support our competitive ambitions.”
Those 10,000 job losses are not just the average Nokia worker though, as apparently three execs have stepped down, the exec VP of mobile phones Mary McDowell, the CMO Jerri DeVard, and exec VP of markets Niklas Savander, and their positions have been filled with newcomers.
So there you go, not good news for Nokia workers in Finland, Canada and Germany to say the least, but the big question is will shedding employees help turn Nokia’s fortunes around…probably not, so perhaps Nokia should have gone with Android rather than Windows Phone…who knows.