Nokia closes research unit in Romania

The entire team of the R&D unit in Romania of Finnish company Nokia, based in Cluj Napoca and currently employing 120 people, could be made redundant by the end of September, according to a restructuring plan published by the mobile phone manufacturer on Wednesday.

Nokia arrived in Romania in 2006 when it took over the worldwide operations of Intellisync, which had a research centre in Cluj Napoca. The Finnish company kept the branch in Cluj, integrated it into its network of such centres and continued to hire people. At the time of the takeover by Nokia in 2006, the centre had 100 employees.

The centre in Cluj is not scheduled for closure because the salaries of the software developers were too high or because of quality problems, but because a “strategic” concentration of research centres was intended, Nokia officials say.

The harshest restructuring programme launched by Nokia in two decades is set to lead to 1 billion-euro savings and entails shedding 7,000 jobs in various divisions of the company. The restructuring will not affect the factory in Cluj, where more than 95 million mobile phones have been assembled since 2008. Nokia’s business in Romania stands at more than 1 billion euros a year, which makes it the second largest exporter after Dacia.