Nokia lays off more workers, opens up to third-party apps
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April 28, 2009 (IDG News Service) Nokia Corp. announced today that it will lay off another 450 employees in the wake of a 27% sales decline in this year's first quarter compared to the same period a year ago.
The Finland-based mobile phone maker, looking for ways to boost its sales while cutting internal costs, also said that it plans to open up the programming interfaces for some of its communications services in an attempt to take better advantage of third-party software developers.
The latest job cuts are related to the changes at the Nokia Services unit and also affect workers in Nokia's IT department and other corporate operations. They come on the heels of Nokia's first-quarter earnings report, which showed that the company sold 93.2 million phones in Q1 a steep drop from the 113.1 million devices it sold during last year's fourth quarter.
Nokia has made a series of cutbacks as it grapples with falling sales fueled by the economic recession. The company announced in February that 320 employees would be laid off, then it said last month that it planned to cut another 1,700 workers.
The layoffs began with a 600-worker reduction announced last November, when Nokia predicted that worldwide handset sales would decline this year because of the economic downturn. Nokia's goal in making the various cuts is to lower its annual costs by €700 million ($910 million U.S.) by next year.
The interface changes announced today are designed to enable third-party developers do more with the vendor's services and devices, according to Nokia.
For example, Nokia will open up the API for its Ovi Share service, said Leslie Nakajima, a spokeswoman at its Nokia Services unit. Ovi Share lets users share content via PCs and mobile phones; an upcoming version of its API will let third-party developers add more ways to share photos and videos, Nakajima said.
The Finland-based mobile phone maker, looking for ways to boost its sales while cutting internal costs, also said that it plans to open up the programming interfaces for some of its communications services in an attempt to take better advantage of third-party software developers.
The latest job cuts are related to the changes at the Nokia Services unit and also affect workers in Nokia's IT department and other corporate operations. They come on the heels of Nokia's first-quarter earnings report, which showed that the company sold 93.2 million phones in Q1 a steep drop from the 113.1 million devices it sold during last year's fourth quarter.
Nokia has made a series of cutbacks as it grapples with falling sales fueled by the economic recession. The company announced in February that 320 employees would be laid off, then it said last month that it planned to cut another 1,700 workers.
The layoffs began with a 600-worker reduction announced last November, when Nokia predicted that worldwide handset sales would decline this year because of the economic downturn. Nokia's goal in making the various cuts is to lower its annual costs by €700 million ($910 million U.S.) by next year.
The interface changes announced today are designed to enable third-party developers do more with the vendor's services and devices, according to Nokia.
For example, Nokia will open up the API for its Ovi Share service, said Leslie Nakajima, a spokeswoman at its Nokia Services unit. Ovi Share lets users share content via PCs and mobile phones; an upcoming version of its API will let third-party developers add more ways to share photos and videos, Nakajima said.
