The former employees at the Finnish flagship company Nokia might just be listening to the classic break up song by Donna Summer and Barbra Streisand. At the moment there’s not much sunshine in the once so prosperous and dynamic Nokia sites. But as in the song, to end a bad relationship is sometimes the only good thing to do and is a condition for something new and better.
On Thursday, Nokia announced a profit warning and the decision to cut 10,000 jobs, 3,700 of them in Finland. The job cuts are set to raise unemployment in Salo to about 20 per cent. At the moment, there’s not much left of the former gloria of the Finnish success story. But if you’ve been talking to the Nokia employees during the last two-three years, this might happened a lot sooner. There has been dissatisfaction for a long time.
Don’t pretend – when it’s over, it’s over
The workers outside the factory in Salo, expressed distrust in the company, as things were not announced earlier. Despite Elop’s promises in the beginning of the year, the Salo factory will not survive its biggest crisis in the company’s history. This week, the company’s CEO Stephen Elop repeated previous assurances that Nokia is a profoundly Finnish company, whose head offices will remain in Finland. After the final cut backs in Salo, most of the former employees suspect that even the head quarters will move abroad.
Microsoft and Lumia – the last chance
Elop has said that while the situation is getting worse at the moment, the company is, nevertheless, selling more Lumia phones, which suggests that the company is moving in the right direction. But how will the company reach the leader position again? During the two-day board meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday, all the board members presented their future vision with one word. Marko Ahtisaari, the son of the former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, had obviously read Steve Jobs’ authorized biography, as had the others. A love for design, passion, meaningfulness and consumer perspective were some of the visions expressed in the meeting. Elop chose simply success. Hopefully the board’s vision will match the ambitions of Microsoft, known as the antithesis of Apple and Jobs.
