Finnish telecom equipment maker Nokiasaid today it would cut up to 1,000 staff at its networks unit.
It is confirmation that the slowing telecoms market is hitting it hard and comes after a profit warning earlier this month.
Nokia Networks spokeswoman Mrs Arja Suominen said it was too early to estimate savings or one-off charges from the cuts, which amount to 4 per cent of the unit's 23,000 workforce. Nokia aims to complete most of the cuts by year-end.
The news comes two weeks after Nokia rocked the market with a warning of weaker earnings for the second quarter, shattering investor hopes that the world's largest maker of handsets could be immune to the slowdown of the global economy and telecoms industry.
Nokia is particularly under pressure in its networks business, where it has been fighting to gain market share from competitors such as Sweden's Ericsson, the world leader in network equipment sales, and Canada's Nortel.
The networks unit accounted for about 25 per cent of the group's sales and operating profit in the first quarter.
Although Nokia has avoided the huge staff cuts made by competitors such as Ericsson and Lucent, it has shed employees in 2001.
In March it said it would cut 300 to 400 jobs in networks, and in June it announced cuts of up to 300 jobs in a German handset manufacturing unit and 50 jobs in its research and development unit in Stockholm.