Nokia China has confirmed that it will cancel its western and eastern sales regions in China, and the related businesses will be merged into its northern and southern regions.
At present, Nokia has four business regions in China. Its western region, with headquarters in Chengdu, will be merged into southern regions, taking Guangzhou as its center; while its Shanghai-headquartered eastern region will be merged into northern region. With these changes, Nokia will only have two major regions in the Chinese market, and they will still focus on sales.
For personnel changes, former head of Nokia China's western region will be in charge of the new greater southern region; while former head of northern region will be in charge of the new greater northern region. At the same time, former leaders of the other two regions will be assigned new positions.
Meanwhile, the company said it will have changes on ordinary employee level, which involve labor layoffs. The exact number of redundant workers was not immediately available.
Prior to this, Nokia announced in June 2012 that it will cut 10,000 employees worldwide before the end of 2013, and it planned to close its facilities in Germany and Canada as well as the manufacturing facility in Finland. With these measures, Nokia was expected to reduce EUR1.6 billion in expenditures.