Nokia announced Tuesday the closure of its German mobile-phone factory, bringing gloom to 2,000 employees and ending Germany's last vestige of wireless phone manufacturing, DPA reported. The announcement follows the 2006 closure of BenQ, formerly Siemens, plants in Germany and last year's shutdown of a Motorola factory. The industry had its heyday in Germany in the 1990s, just after the sophisticated technology evolved. Some components of the phones, such as the subscriber identity module (SIM) card which gives a mass-produced phone its unique number, were first made in Germany. But today, mobile phones can be more cheaply assembled in Asia or eastern Europe. "It's like a stab in the back," said Tulay Aras, 34, a shocked worker at the plant in Bochum, western Germany. "My husband Timur doesn't even know yet: he's coming to work today on the afternoon shift." Nokia, maker of four in every 10 mobile phones sold worldwide, is to shift much of the production capacity from Bochum to a new plant at Cluj, Romania after deciding labour costs are too high in Germany. The German site employs 2,300 people, according to a Nokia statement in the Finnish capital Helsinki.
