Nokia to reduce investments, cut 450 jobs

MONACO: Nokia Oyj, the world's biggest mobile phone maker, said on Tuesday it would reduce investment in creating new services, helping it to cut further 450 jobs.

Nokia, which made its first ever quarterly pretax loss in January-March, is cutting annual costs at its key handset unit alone by more than 700 million euros ($911 million) to counter plunging demand.

To cope with slowing phone demand Nokia is building a new business from mobile Internet services - like games or maps - but has scaled back investment plans due to the slowdown.

Nokia said it will "focus investments on fewer initiatives and increase the use of common enablers across certain services".

"We are moving into Ovi, into a platform strategy," Tero Ojanpera, head of the entertainment and communities operations at Nokia, told Reuters in an interview on sidelines of Nokia developer summit in Monaco.

Nokia said the 450 job cuts would also involve internal IT unit and industry collaboration activities. It has so far slashed 3,000 jobs across the organization.

The overall mobile phone market is expected to shrink 10 percent this year, as consumers rein in spending and handset sellers try to clear out unsold phones.