Over 15,000 protest against Nokia's German exit

Over 15,000 people took to the streets in protest against the closure of Nokia’s German handset plant on Tuesday, according to police estimates.

The march took place at the plant’s location in Bochum, in the industrial district of the Ruhr region of Germany.

Nokia’s decision to close the handset manufacturing plant and make up to 2,300 workers redundant sparked a political backlash earlier this week. Both labour union IG Metall and the country’s Social Democrat Party joined the call for protest and SDP leader Kurt Beck also appealed for a boycott on Nokia products.

A straw poll, published by German weekly magazine Stern, found that 56 per cent of those surveyed would not buy a Nokia phone in the future, and 68 per cent expected the closure of the Bochum plant to have lasting effects.

Nokia said it would discontinue the production of mobile devices and close its Bochum site by mid-year. The company said that Germany has become too expensive and it intends to move manufacturing operations to cheaper European sites. Romania is understood to be high on the list of cheaper locations.