Nokia Axes 1,700 Employees

The company is culling employees in its in Devices and Markets units, Corporate Development Office and global support functions. The cuts represent roughly 1 percent of Nokia's worldwide workforce.

In January, the world's largest handset maker said it was aiming to cut costs by $910 million, at which point it asked employees to voluntarily resign and take a severance package. Nokia had reported that fourth-quarter net income fell to $745 million from $2.4 billion in the same period a year ago.

Nokia also said it expected industry mobile device volumes in the first quarter of 2009 would decline sequentially even more than seasonal sequential decreases in the first quarter of the past few years.

In addition, Nokia forecast that 2009 mobile device industry volumes would fall approximately 10 percent from 2008 levels, more than the first half of the year. Originally, Nokia estimated that industry mobile device volumes would decline 5 percent or more from 2008 levels.

On Tuesday, analysts at Goldman Sachs cut Nokia earnings per share forecasts for 2009 and 2010 and forecastd that the handset market will shrink 14 percent this year but increase 5 percent next year, according to Reuters.

Nokia has tried to shore up sinking sales by inking agreements with T-Mobile and Skype.

In February at the Mobile World Congress 2009 in Barcelona, Spain, Nokia and T-Mobile said customers will be able to download widgets from both the T-Mobile widget gallery and Nokia's Ovi Store using T-Mobile's web'n'walk widget platform. The offering was slated to be available during the second half of 2009 on mass-market Nokia Series 40 platform-based phones. At the same conference, Skype said it planned to integrate its services on the Nokia N97 beginning in the third quarter of 2009.