Länsiväylä: Microsoft may oust over a thousand employees in Espoo
Microsoft may lay off half of it's staff in Espoo, sources revealed to Länsiväylä newspaper. Microsoft has not yet confirmed the number of people affected by the shake-up announced last week, following write downs of Mobile Phones business purchased from Nokia. The information comes from anonymous sources close to Länsiväylä.
The software giant would be left with around a thousand employees in Espoo. Half of those, some five hundred, are ex-employees of Nokia. The rest are staff from before the acquisition of the Mobile Phones business from Nokia.
– We do not comment rumors or speculations. Effects of the restructuring by units will be confirmed as the co-operative negotions continue, responds Microsoft communications.
Microsoft is reducing staff aggressively and closing down product development in the city of Salo - home of the Nokia Mobile Phone business. The news came as no surprise to the staff, but the timing could have been better - July is the most common holiday month in Finland. The reprocussions if layouts of this scale add fuel to speculation of a possible housing price bubble in Finland.
As the Finnish law requires the Company and Employee representatives will hold co-operative negotiations. The aim of the negotiations is to try to find alternative solutions to the problems. The anonymous source states that the company has already made the decisions and that the negotiations are just a formality.
The plan to focus the Lumia Smartphone model range to low-end and high-end smart models is a reasonable, but the move should have been made a lot sooner.
Just five years ago Nokia had 20 000 employees in Finland. Since the sale of Mobile Phone Business to Microsoft, the company focuses on Mobile Networks, Mapping Services and Emerging technologies. Currently Nokia employs some 4 000 people in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area. The company recently commented on speculations of it's return to the mobile phones business.
Background information
- Last week Microsoft informed that it will lay off 2300 employees in Finland from it's mobile phone business unit. It will close down the Salo unit alltogether.
- The layoffs are amount to around half of the Company's employees in Finland
- Work is being transferred from Salo to Espoo and Tampere. An estimated 20-30 will move from Salo to Espoo.
- The company will create a support program for the ousted employees and promises additional compensation to laid off staff
- The shake-up is due to the fact that sales of Lumia devices have been slower than expected
- Microsoft bought Mobile Phone business from Nokia in April 2014 for 5,44 Billion Euro. In 2014 the company laid off over a thousand employees.
Source: Länsiväylä