Nokia axes 4,000, shifts smartphone manufacturing East Having reviewed operations at its manufacturing facilities in Hungary, Mexico and Finland, Nokia has decided to halt its assembly lines there. Smartphones will still be customised at the three sites, but the gear itself will be built in Asia. The change will affect 4,000 jobs between the factories – loading custom firmware …
After all, nobody is buying whatever Nokia manages to make - all the Symbian owners are running hell for leather towards Android manufacturers after the idiot in charge took a dump on the Symbian platform that was keeping the company afloat and still had at least 2 years life left in it before anything was likely to replace it.
Also funny how BlackBerry announced yesterday at BB Dev Con that Qt would be at the very heart of the BlackBerry 10 platform. So that's the Qt write-once-run-everywhere "ecosystem" available for every platform - Windows/Mac/Linux desktops, Symbian, MeeGo, Tizen, BlackBerry, Android, iOS, Raspberry-Pi - but one. Yep, Windows Phone 7.
Genius, Elop & Nokia. You almost had it all, but will end up with nothing.
I'm a Symbian stalwart who has to code for Android at work, and I'll be running hell for leather AWAY from that Frankenstein's monster of a platform.
The Symbian platform didn't actually have a "best before" date... it was Nokia's crap S60 UI that needed to be put on the compost heap. Maddeningly, the Belle UI is excellent.
Great to hear that BlackBerry are adopting Qt. I wish Nokia/Digia would get their arses in gear and *officially* support Qt for iOS, Android etc. As for Windows Phone 7, it's not even possible to get a Qt port working...
It's already a reality - there are already Qt-based apps available in the Apple App Store. Same for Android.
Qt is now the most cross-platform mobile development framework after HTML5, and the only cross-platform framework capable of supporting native code development. If you're a switched on developer and want to target all platforms with a native app (not HTML5) then Qt really is the only choice.
MeeGo-Harmattan was the obvious replacement for Symbian in the longer term, and having used an N9 there's no reason Nokia could not have succeeded with MeeGo and Symbian both using Qt and trading market share gradually over the next few years. Nokia with Qt really did - for the first time in a long while - have a compelling software strategy for the future. Instead Elop traded the whole lot for single digit market share and no control over the companies destiny - they're just a Microsoft ODM now.
Nokia needs to restructure to be successful and this makes total sense. As an employee affected by the recent spate of redundancies, whilst obviously not happy about being made redundant, the level of support they are providing to those affected is, in my opinion, top notch. Show me other companies that offer 8 months effective salary + 2 months support on full pay + training + grants to start up new businesses and learn new skills all to someone who is been there only 18 months.....
The fact that even factories in lower-wage hungary have to close down, does not shed a good light upon Europe. Most of southern and eastern Europe is in deep economic trouble, but still China is more competitive ? That clearly means we will see some very ugly economic news in the next couple of years.
This puts me in mind of the Soviets uprooting their factories and moving them to the East during the Second World War.
As I recall, once the Soviets had had time to lick their wounds and reorganise, they were able to march unstoppably Westward to reclaim their lost territories, and even gain more.
I wonder if the story will be similar for Nokia?
Waiting for Jim or any other ----censured under rule 7----- to come and tell us why this is a great move for Nokia, WP7 and the consumers!
As many have posted before, Nokia had a winner with the N9 with Meego/Harmatan, and with QT had a great strategy. The N9 is selling more globally than the over-hyped Lumias, and without any kind of publicity. A CEO working for the better of its company would have seen by now it was time to change strategy, but Elop keeps destroying everything that can be used as an advantage by Nokia. What he has done isn't yet enough to get him arrested, if not for corporate sabotage, at least for criminal incompetence? Or will the EU and the Finnish government wait until MS tries to buy the remains of Nokia for a few cents? The patents are already being fostered on a patent troll, the factories are being dismantled, the platforms are abandoned, selling systems are disdained and crappy, unsellable ones are pushed as the way forward, isn't that enough damning evidence?
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