Nokia to axe a further 4,000 jobs as cost-cutting drive continues

Firm to move more manufacturing to Asia

Nokia has announced it is to slash another 4,000 jobs as the struggling phone maker continues to cut-costs and streamline its operations.

The cuts will take place at factories in Mexico, Hungary and Finland, as the firm said it will move the majority of the work in these locations to its Asian factories to accelerate its production processes.

"Shifting device assembly to Asia is targeted at improving our time to market" said Nokia vice president for markets Niklas Savander.

"By working more closely with our suppliers, we believe that we will be able to introduce innovations into the market more quickly and ultimately be more competitive."

While this will led to the huge jobs cuts Nokia said the factories would remain open on a smaller scale to work on what it called "smartphone product customisation" for products sent to European markets and the Americas.

"Our factories at Komarom [Hungary], Reynosa [Mexico] and Salo [Finland] will continue to play an important role serving our smartphone customers," Savander added.

The firm said that the cuts would take place throughout 2012.

The cuts are the latest in a series of redundancies the firm has undertaken since chief executive Stephen Elop took over in late 2010, as he seeks to drive down costs at the firm and refocus its smartphone strategy on Microsoft's Windows Phone platform.

Gartner analyst Carolina Milenasi told V3 the cuts were no surprise and had been on the cards for a while as the Asian region continues to attract smartphone production.

"Nokia is continuing on the path started in September with the closure of factories in Eastern Europe," she said.

"Labour costs in Asia are still more competitive than even Eastern Europe so from a cost perspective this makes perfect sense. It also makes sense when you look at where the growth in the coming years will come from."

Despite the ongoing cuts and shift in strategy the firm is still facing a tough future after it posted a whopping $954m operating loss for the last quarter.

However, sales of its critically-acclaimed Nokia Lumia 800 device have now passed one million.