O2 to shut 40 U.K. Stores
Telefonica SA’s mobile-phone unit O2 is reportedly aiming to close 40 of its 490 U.K. stores in the next three months, resulting in about 400 job cuts.
According to reports, O2 is planning to close the company’s smallest stores.
According to the company, retail numbers will be the same at the end of the forthcoming redundancy process as current levels, and up on present numbers by the end of the year. It will recruit 250 technology advisers, or Gurus, at the same time, bringing its number of Gurus to 400 in total.
It is unclear whether O2 will seek to have, broadly, one Guru per store, or focus technical resource on tier-one shops.
The move is to expand its portfolio of devices and services and increase investment in technical support for customers.
Nokia Scales Back Terminations – Saves 300 Jobs
Nokia is scaling back the job cuts it announced last month and will be cutting 500 jobs instead of the 800 it had announced. The job cuts come mainly from the teams working on Symbian smartphones and consolidating some projects and functions.
According to reports citing Paeivyt Tallqvist, a spokeswoman, Nokia’s operations in the Helsinki area, including the headquarters in Espoo, will lose 120 employees. The company expects to cut 198 positions in Tampere, 103 in the northern city of Oulu and 82 in Salo, where it has a factory producing smartphones.
He added , Nokia was able to scale back the cuts by transferring some employees to open jobs, and is continuing the effort.
The group’s worldwide workforce at the end of last September was just over 131,500 employees.
Vodafone UK remains silent on job cuts
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Plans for around 500 job losses in the UK unit of Vodafone have been reported as a part of a stepped up cost-cutting programme. The network’s headquarters in Newbury has the most predominant chances to expect this job cut.
However, any such claims has been dismissed as “highly speculative” by the Vodafone spokeswoman. 500 redundancies in the UK were announced by the company last year as part of an earlier £1 billion cost cutting exercise. Since then, the deadline for achieving the cuts has been brought forward besides doubling the target to £2 billion.
According to the media reports, the problem Vodafone have got is that it is so bloated, it has tons of people and they have to cut – it is absolutely essential.
