Close to 200 high-tech jobs could be lost in Burnaby when Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK) closes its research centre there.
The Finnish mobile phone maker plans to slash 10,000 jobs worldwide by 2013. As part of the downsizing, it plans to close some of its operations, including its Burnaby research centre.
It’s not clear when the Burnaby research centre will close or how many jobs will be lost. A Nokia spokesperson could not be reached to comment.
According to Business in Vancouver’s 2011 Book of Lists, the Burnaby Nokia office employs 190 people.
Nokia’s Lumia smartphones use Microsoft’s (Nasdaq:MSFT) Windows operating system.
Like Research In Motion (TSX:RIM), Nokia is up against stiff competition for the smartphone market from the likes of Apple (Nasdaq:AAPL) and Samsung (Nasdaq: SSNLF).
Bill Tam, CEO of the BC Technology Industry Association, said he was surprised to hear the Burnaby operations are on the chopping block, given the close relationship Nokia has with Microsoft, which has a development centre in Vancouver.
“The surprise for us is with Nokia’s partnership with Microsoft – it seems advantageous to have the location here in British Columbia,” Tam said.
“Nokia has been part of our tech community since 1998, when they acquired a company called Vienna Systems. They’ve been a long-standing part of our technology ecosystem. We feel [the closure] would be a tremendous loss to our community here.”
Tam added that job growth within Vancouver’s high-sector sector should easily absorb the job losses in Burnaby.
“In our tech talent study, we demonstrated there is probably going to be in the neighbourhood of 3,000 to 4,000 new jobs created in the technology sector overall,” Tam said.
“I anticipate that, with the highly skilled folks that work as part of Nokia today… they will more than likely be absorbed very quickly with other growing organizations in our industry.”
