Talous Sanomat reporter Aleksi Moisio has discovered that Nokia plans on cutting 60 more positions. The cuts impact the Accessory Unit, which currently employees 200 people, and is spread out over Finland, Germany and China. Of those 60 cuts, 50 are to take place in Finland, and 10 in Germany, and assuming this figure of 200 people is correct, that’s 30% of one unit gone in the blink of an eye.
I find this a bit odd since accessories have the highest margins in the mobile industry. When I worked for Helio, many moons ago, my boss ordered mobile phone cases directly from China. We sold them for $20 separately, and bundled them free with new phone purchases. When I asked him what he paid for them, he said less than a dollar each. That type of markup is also common when it comes to memory cards, Bluetooth headsets, and other crap you buy post handset purchase.
Was the Accessory Unit not being innovative enough in creating new types of goods that consumers would want to purchase along with their new handsets, or have the Chinese simply started making stuff that’s of high enough quality that Nokia can just pay them to slap a Nokia logo on their goods and then resell at a premium to brand whore Europeans and Asians?
The world may never know.
[Via: @funktio]
Update: In some what better news, last month we reported that Nokia was going to cut 285 jobs in Salo, Finland. Turns out that the company “only” cut 268 jobs.
Update: Aleksi from Talous Sanomat contacted me to let me know that the original source of this story is Turun Sanomat, who is based near Salo, Finland.