Nokia fired many workers globally last year, mostly in the west where most operations were done. That was a figure of around 3500 and 4 factories, one of them being the Cluj factory in Romania. It seems Steve Elop has plans to take operations to the East with news that there will be a launch next week of a factory in Vietnam. The factory will be launched next week and 10,000 workers will be hires. Nokia isnt the first company to want utilising cheap labour in the East. Apple, HTC, LG, Sony and Samsung all manufacture there, and it’s only sensible to assume that lowering of operation costs is the reason behind this idea.
Nokia has a Chinese factory, but moving to Vietnam would mean cheap labour and access to raw materials readily available for manufacturing. Nokia has been facing a hard shift when the markershare it strived hard to acquire over years is going with Apple and Samsung, due to the “burning platform” problems. Even though Nokia still has a firm grip on the feature phones market,
Nokia is said to have plans to spend $300 million in building of the new factory in Vietnam. A press conference to be held on the 23rd of April will confirm more details about the decision. Nokia aims to produce upto 45 milion handsets per year once the firm is set and running by year 2014. The type of devices going to be manufactured in the firm is anyone’s guess as there is no word whether it will be a feature phones, smartphone, or mixed factory. We can only wait for the press conference.
Nokia is announcing 2012 Q1 financial results in two days, lets wait and see what comes off it.
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