Nokia just called – their number’s up and they’re going down

Nokia just called – their number’s up and they’re going down: "

Not so long ago, Nokia ruled the world of mobile phones; the Finnish company pioneered mainstream devices and was the undisputed brand on every continent. But then came along the smartphone, a handset which moved the mobile proposition along, and Nokia was caught like a rabbit in the headlights. The world began to realise there was life beyond their small screens, complicated user interfaces and frustratingly slow and buggy software.

Because there phones was ubiquitous, many people thought Nokia was infallible. But in the past year alone, their market share hasn’t declined so much, as it’s jumped off a cliff and landed a big bonfire – in the past twelve months, Nokia’s market share for mobile handsets has plummeted from 39 per cent to 24 per cent.

Today, Nokia has announced the loss of 4,000 jobs worldwide – the majority will be from its headquarters in Finland, as well as Denmark and the UK. The company is also transferring 3,000 jobs associated with the development of its Symbian operating platform to another company, Accenture. Nokia employs 131,000 across its various divisions, so 7,000 jobs lost represents over 5 per cent of the workforce.

Of course they’re not job losses, it’s an ‘alignment of its global workforce and consolidation of site operations’ according to the company. Nokia wants to be lean and fighting-fit - it gearing up to tackle iPhone and Android with its next generation smartphones that will utilise the Windows Phone operating system. So they’ve lost the battle, and not too many people can see them winning the war, either.

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