Layoffs at Nokia After Strong Third Quarter

Welcome news for Nokia shareholders this morning. And ugly news for the company’s employees.

Nokia reported better-than-expected earnings for its third quarter–net income of 529 million euros from a loss of 559 million euros a year earlier. That’s well ahead of the 229 million euro consensus forecast and a sign that the company, whose stock has lost more than 70 percent of its value over the past three years, is finally turning the corner.

But that progress has a price: Layoffs. Nokia plans to sack around 1,800 employees, cutting them loose so that it can better “accelerate the company’s transformation towards a leading mobile solutions provider.”

That transformation is, of course, in desperate need of acceleration. That said, Nokia does seem to be making some progress. It sold 26.5 million smartphones during the third quarter, up 61 percent compared with the same period last year.

A nice metric for Nokia’s new CEO, Stephen Elop, to mull as he strives to drag the company up out of the mud. “In the five weeks since joining Nokia, I have found a company with many great strengths and a history of achievement that are second to none in the industry,” he said in a statement. “And yet our company faces a remarkably disruptive time in the industry, with recent results demonstrating that we must reassess our role in and our approach to this industry.”