Mobile network equipment maker Nokia Siemens Networks has started talks with employees to lay off 400 jobs in Finland.
The cuts are part of the company’s plans revealed in November 2011 to cull 17,000 of its 74,000 workforce in order to reduce costs by €1bn by the end of 2013.
Earlier this year, the company said it would lay off about 2,900 jobs in Germany from its 9,100 workforce there.
Currently, Nokia Siemens is in negotiations with several firms to sell its business support systems (BSS) unit to cut its product lines and concentrate on mobile broadband.
Nokia Siemens is facing stiff competition from the likes of Chinese equipment vendors Huawei and ZTE.
The company has already sold off its wired networks equipment and exited the market for WiMax, a wireless technology that has failed to win support of Long Term Evolution (LTE) technologies for next-generation 4G networks.
Nokia Siemens is also planning to focus more on low cost countries that include India, Portugal, Manila, Shanghai for its research and development (R&D) operations.
Nokia Siemens Networks was founded in 2007 as a joint venture between Siemens of Germany and Finnish Nokia and focuses on global data networking and telecommunications equipment.
The company has operations in 150 countries and employs 6,200 people in Finland.
In another development, Nokia Siemens Networks is in talks to hive off business-support-systems unit as pat of its plan to divest its non-core assets and focus on its mobile broadband network equipment business.
The company is looking for buyers to sell its applications business, according to Wall Street Journal.
