BUSINESS

- reported by Osiris.

Nokia, the world's number 1 mobile phone manufacturer has announced plans to cut almost 2000 jobs at its base in Helsinki, Finland.

The reason was that Nokia saw a slump in shares and profits in Q4 of 2005, supposedly caused by the drop in sales of Nokia phones. Consumers were more attracted to the unique and stylish designs of Korean manufacturer Samsung and Japan's Sony Ericsson.

And the cause for Nokia's design flaws would be its Chief Designer Greg Horman. Horman, who has worked with the Finnish company for almost seven years, played an important role in Nokia's success in previous years with his then-trendy designs, for example the 8250 and 6610, which had earned the title of 'most basic and user-friendly phones'.

However as the IT industry progresses into the next stage, Horman's designs still remained almost the same as that 1999 drawing board, except for a few external changes.

While Nokia had introduced its brand-new N-Series, which features the 2-megapixel video phone N90 along other N-models, sales were not as what Nokia had expected.

"It's disappointing. The figures are a record low, while they [Samsung] enjoy high profits. It must be the design of our phones." said Jorla Ollila, CEO of Nokia.

"Horman tried his very best to revolutionize the phone concept, but somehow it didn't work out the way he wanted, and the profits didn't go the direction we wanted. So we had no choice but to sacrifice a talented company asset."




The Nokia N90. Who would waste so much money for a video-camera phone which looks quite ordinary?




Horman could not be reached for comment, possibly locking himself in his bedroom and crying at press time after receiving the news of his sacking.

Rotters International decided to conduct a survey to find out whether Nokia phones were losing its popularity. The results were astonishing.

Percentage who dislike Nokia:
US : 67%
UK : 69%
Japan : 99%
South Korea : 95%
Australia : 73%

We were unable to obtain the results from Singapore at press time as our very chee-bye correspondent was sleeping on the job. But not to worry, after being given a stern warning, he has vowed to be more hardworking.

How the almost-2000 retrenched workers will cope is unknown, but Nokia says that they are looking into the matter seriously and will make sure that every ex-employee will be able to find another job in the similar job sector.

Samsung's spokesman was undoubtedly delighted when he spoke to Rotters International.

"It goes to show that our concepts and designs are modern and stylish and appeal to the common people. We don't need to go to extremes like Carl Zeiss lens to sell well."






The Samsung e760. What no need to go to extremes - what use does the motion recognition technology have? Another ploy to cheat our money right?

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