Nokia Says Planning Job Cuts in Technologies Unit

"Nokia Technologies has revised its long-term strategy and will consequently reshape organisation. As part of this, talks have been initiated with the staff," spokeswoman Riitta Mard said.

The unit, which includes Nokia's patents and brand-licensing business, employs 650 globally and about 400 in Finland.

Nokia last week said it had partnered with HP, Microsoft and Telefonica for collaboration in IT infrastructure and workplace space.

The transformation is planned to be completed during the first quarter of 2017, Nokia said in a statement.

"With the new cloud-based architecture in place, the company will be in a unique position to harness the complete potential of IT and telecommunications operations for superior quality, greater agility and faster introduction of new IT services," it added. No financial details of the deal were disclosed.

As part of the partnership, HP will provide an array of IT services, while Microsoft will be tcopy

ey enabler for transferring the IT services to the cloud and supporting Nokia in adoption of new social and collaboration capabilities, the statement added.

Also last week, Nokia and Facebook confirmed the testing of Here maps integration with the social network. A Facebook spokesperson said, "We are testing Nokia Here maps across Facebook to give us more control and flexibility in delivering a consistent maps experience. I can confirm that we're testing Here maps in Android versions of some of our standalone apps like Instagram and Messenger as well." In the meanwhile, a Here spokesperson said, "We're excited that our maps can be enjoyed by Facebook users."

Written with agency inputs