Nokia cutting 1,000 jobs while EE to close 78 UK stores

Changes in the competitive smartphone market look set to cost more UK jobs as smartphone producer Nokia and telecommunications provider Everything Everywhere (EE) both announce a programme of cuts.

Nokia outlined plans to cut over 1,000 jobs from its IT organisation as part of a previously announced restructuring, which will eventually see the company cull 10,000 jobs worldwide. Of those 1,000 positions, 820 will transfer to Indian IT firms HCL Technologies and TATA Consultancy Services.

Three hundred jobs will disappear altogether, with Nokia's home country of Finland bearing the brunt. The mobile firm recently dropped from a list of the top five smartphone vendors.

Meanwhile, EE, the UK's biggest mobile network operator, has announced it will close 78 high-street stores, placing a number of managerial jobs under threat.

The move comes after last year's rebranding of over 600 stores, which previously operated under the banners of Orange and T-Mobile before the two firms combined to become EE. The merger meant some EE stores were just yards away from one another on the high street.

However, the mobile operator said no front-line staff are under threat, as employees will just transfer to a nearby store over the coming months.

The result of the closures for managerial staff looks less certain.

"We have reviewed our retail estate to improve the service our customers are receiving on the high street," said an EE spokesman.

"As part of this, where we have two EE stores in very close proximity to each other - in some places they are just a door away - we have decided to consolidate. This makes commercial sense and will also help us manage the high levels of demand in our stores and improve the customer experience.

"All front-line staff will be moving to the other store which will boost service levels significantly. A store can only have one manager, so we will look to redeploy the small number of affected managers where possible," the EE spokesman added.

EE is currently the only mobile operator to offer 4G in the UK, but other operators including BT have also applied to begin running the service this year.