Today's announcement will impact approximately 220 employees in Japan. Nokia last week announced it plans to reduce some of its R&D activities in Finland and Denmark.

Nokia plans to align its R&D operations in Finland and Denmark. Up to 230 employees at the Oulu site in Finland and around 100 employees at the Copenhagen site in Denmark will be affected, Nokia said. The number would represent about 2 % of its R&D personnel globally.

Nokia has reported a loss for the July to September quarter after sales sank by almost a fifth.

Samsung sees size and power benefits in phase-change memory (PCM), a memory type that is being pushed as a replacement for memory that goes into devices like mobile phones today.

South Korean telecom regulators have approved the sale of Apple's iPhone in a market currently dominated by local handset manufacturers. Officials at KT, the country's number-two mobile service provider, said they plan to start selling iPhones next month.

South Korea's exports fell for a tenth consecutive month as global demand for the nation's automobiles, mobile phones, textiles and steel faltered.

The world's Number-2 handset maker is focusing on improving its weaknesses - low-priced phones and high-priced smartphones

The world's biggest mobile phone maker saw a 66% slide in quarterly profit as the economic downturn hit demand for handsets. Rival Sony Ericsson also reported a quarterly loss and warned that the rest of the year would remain difficult for the company.

ZTE has said it had won 34% of China Mobile Communications's third-round 3G network expansion tender.

William Ogle, who was most recently chief marketing officer at Samsung Telecommunications America, will head marketing, advertising and brand strategy for Motorola's flagship business.

Nokia's strategic relationship with Intel, announced last month, may be very forward-looking and not about to worry any incumbent wireless chipset suppliers, but it is nonetheless threatening to Europe's local hero, ARM Holdings.

"Contents and services drive sales of devices ... Our No. 1 mission is to raise the software value of our devices," Lee of Samsung's Media Solution Center, said at a conference in Seoul.

"Even if they get just a piece of Nokia'ss business, it's a big deal," said Will Strauss, a Cave Creek, Arizona-based analyst for research firm Forward Concepts. "Nokia is still the biggest cell-phone maker in the world."