Another 4,000 production jobs axed at Nokia

Nokia may have some hot new smartphone models coming this year, but its financial turmoil isn’t over. The Finnish phone giant said Wedneday morning that it plans to cut around 4,000 jobs.

The company is reducing production at plants in Hungary, Mexico and Salo, Finland. The three plants make smartphones now and Nokia is now shifting a lot of that work to Asia to be closer to its suppliers. Nokia wants to speed the time it takes to get new products on the market. The cutbacks show that the job of transforming a giant company like Nokia is a long and difficult one.

Customization work will continue at all of the plants.

“With the planned changes, our factories at Komarom, Reynosa and Salo will continue to play an important role serving our smartphone customers,” Nokia executive vice president Niklas Savander said in a statement. “They give us a unique ability to both provide customization and be more responsive to customer needs,”

The job cuts will take place throughout the year. Meanwhile, Nokia is proceeding with a huge change as it shifts its smartphone strategy to Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system.

The company previously announced other job cuts such as closing a Romanian factory.

Nokia Lumia 900 photo: Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat