Pekka Lundmark, Nokia’s former boss, once drew appreciative laughter from an audience when he observed that an iPhone made with vacuum tubes, the forerunner of the modern-day transistor, would be as big as the Empire State Building. The much smaller transistor, around 18 billion of which are included in an iPhone, was invented in 1947 by scientists at Bell Labs, an organization Nokia picked up a decade ago with its €15.6 billion (US$18.2 billion) takeover of Alcatel-Lucent. Under Finnish ownership, it seems to have miniaturized more than just its components.
Marcus Weldon, who worked as president of Bell Labs and Nokia’s chief technology officer between 2016 and 2021, launched an unusually outspoken attack on his former employer in a LinkedIn post this week. In it, he describes apparent cuts to R&D as “shocking and unprecedented” and observes “a desire by the current leadership to erase the history of the organization.”
That could be down to “simple ignorance,” he writes. The alternative explanation, he continues, is that today’s leadership is embarrassed by its failure to be as impactful as the Bell Labs of yesteryear. At the time of publication, Nokia had yet to comment on Weldon’s post.
The cuts, to start with, have erased about half the research jobs at Bell Labs since Weldon left in 2021, according to his estimate. Back then, it employed more than 1,200 people in research, he says. If he is right, perhaps only 600 remain. As he notes, there has been no public update by Nokia on what he calls “the latest round of reductions.” But Weldon says they are “very evident from LinkedIn posts.”
Unprecedented seems a fair description. In the late 1990s, as a subsidiary of Lucent Technologies, Bell Labs had a total workforce of about 24,000 people, according to an article at the time from MIT Technology Review. Only 1,300 of those worked on the R side of R&D, however. By the time Weldon moved on about 23 years later, the research team had shrunk by as few as 100 employees over this entire period, based on his estimate. Since then, it has lost up to six times as many, if his numbers are correct.
Dramatic downsizing
If staffing developments at Bell Labs are largely hidden from view, Nokia’s dramatic downsizing since Weldon left is no secret. In 2021, it employed nearly 88,000 people on average worldwide, including 11,000 in North America, where Bell Labs is based. That meant 15,000 Nokia jobs had already disappeared since 2018. By 2025, headcount had dropped to 78,000, including staff at Infinera, the optical equipment maker that employed more than 3,000 people when Nokia acquired it in February that year.
A breakdown of staff numbers by region shows most of the pain has been felt by employees in Greater China, which includes Hong Kong and Taiwan, rather than North America. Since 2021, headcount in that region has fallen by 5,000, giving Nokia a Greater China workforce of 7,200 employees last year. Nokia’s North American staff have experienced a net reduction of just 1,000 roles, to roughly 10,000 employees, over this same period.
What’s also clear is that cuts worldwide are expected to continue. Under a restructuring program initiated by Lundmark, Nokia had previously expected to end 2026 with 70,000 people, excluding Infinera. Judging by numbers published in its annual report, this would have meant cutting another 4,100 jobs this year. In relation to that, Nokia expected to incur restructuring costs for the full year of about €250 million ($291 million).
But that figure was sharply increased to €800 million ($933 million) last month, when Nokia published its second-quarter report. An opportunity to make further cuts in Europe would add €200 million ($233 million) to the bill, said the company. The remaining €350 million ($408 million) was to go on restructuring in China following Nokia’s full takeover of Nokia Shanghai Bell, previously a Chinese joint venture with state-owned China Huaxin.
As subsequently revealed by Light Reading, Nokia now seems to be exiting China. It has confirmed it will close an R&D facility in Hangzhou this year, with the apparent loss of around 1,600 jobs. Screenshots obtained by this publication show messaging exchanges between Nokia employees that discuss plans to close other sites in Beijing, Chengdu, Qingdao and Shanghai. A loss of market share in China, from which Nokia’s senior managers have said they expect to be completely excluded in the future, is largely blamed.
It’s not about me
All this would make R&D cuts at other parts of Nokia a much bigger concern. The company has previously faced criticism for spending too little on R&D compared with its main rivals, especially in mobile. That said, Nokia’s financial reports show that overall R&D spending has risen sharply in the last couple of years, growing from about €4.3 billion ($5 billion) in 2023 to nearly €4.9 billion ($5.7 billion) in 2025. For the first half of 2026, spending was up 6% year-over-year, to more than €2.3 billion ($2.7 billion).
Despite the hefty cuts elsewhere, Nokia suffered an operating loss of €50 million ($58 million) on a reported basis for the recent second quarter, compared with a €147 million ($171 million) profit the year before. Sales grew 8% over this period, to more than €4.8 billion ($5.6 billion).
Weldon today serves as a board director for two smaller telecom and tech players, according to his LinkedIn profile. He is also under contract to advise Informa Group, Light Reading’s parent company, on its AI strategy. But he seems particularly upset by the recent moves of his former employer. Among other things, he says, it has scrapped the job title of Bell Labs “President” and removed plaques honoring former presidents since the organization was founded in 1925.
As if to stave off accusations of vanity, Weldon writes: “This is by no means about me – I was undoubtedly one of the lesser ones in a list of pioneers of the digital age, whose greats should be celebrated in perpetuity, not diminished and removed.”
There is, nevertheless, a broader sense that Bell Labs has lost some of its former luster as the telecom sector has itself shrunk and been overtaken by other technology forces. An R&D powerhouse of the 20th century, Bell Labs exists today in the shadow of the American giants spending billions to develop AI, the technology of the moment. Microsoft’s R&D budget for its most recent fiscal year approached $36 billion. Alphabet’s topped $49 billion. Chips giant Nvidia, now a Nokia shareholder, spent $18.5 billion.
Weldon reports on a recent conversation with someone who apparently expressed shock after hearing “a very senior leader at Nokia say that ‘Bell Labs hasn’t achieved anything notable in 15 years [and so] the leadership would be changing.'” Weldon had initially dismissed that as “hearsay” but now has a gloomier assessment: “These are sad times in which we live.”
