The announcement did not come as a surprise to staff members, who had been told that 500 people were expected to be made redundant within the group.

“A little of this could be seen already in the quarterly report which announced that there would be various different forms of restructuring and efficiency improvements when we became fully owned by Sony,” said Erik Yström of Sony Mobile to Dagens Industri newspaper (DI).

The cuts are part of a global savings package which was announced in January.

There are over 2,500 staff members at the Lund development centre, and Sony executives are planning to continue making layoffs until they have reached their quota, which should occur before summer.

Sony’s decision to buy Ericsson’s half of the now-defunct Sony Ericsson mobile handset joint venture took effect in October, 2011 and €1.05 billion ($1.47 billion) was paid for the Swedish half of the Japanese/Swedish partnership in February, 2012.

The new company, Sony Mobile Communications, has over 7,000 members of staff worldwide and development facilities in Lund, Tokyo, Beijing, and the Silicon Valley.

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