Time running out for Nokia to pull back This is beginning to look like death by a thousand cuts. Nokia this week said it would axe 10,000 staff and reshuffle jobs at the top. Losses at its mobile phone business this quarter, it admitted, would be even larger than expected. The Top Line The announcement follows months of an increasingly desperate scramble to reverse the decline at the company, until recently the world's biggest seller of mobile phones. Since Stephen Elop took over as chief executive in 2010 he has cut 24,000 jobs, including those announced on Thursday, from a total of 66,000. Most controversially, he has pinned the company's future to an alliance with Microsoft to produce a Windows phone. So far his efforts have yielded little. Nokia shares have shed three-quarters of their value since Mr Elop took over. And Nokia's losses are mounting as it becomes ever clearer that it is losing the mobile phone war to Apple and phones using the Android operating system. There is no question that Nokia's management realises the depths of the crisis it is in. But Mr Elop's valiant attempts to reduce costs are not sufficient. What is needed is a significant boost at the other end of the equation - to sales and the topline. For this to happen, Nokia's strategy - based on its new Lumia phones, and the launch of an operating system within the next year - must start to pay off. Unfortunately, with little sign of this happening, Nokia may be running out of time. Its mobile phone division is burning through cash, and although the company's overall position is still comfortable - it had nearly €5bn in net cash at the last count - it has a €1.25bn bond falling due in early 2014. More importantly, Deutsche Bank estimates that Nokia's cash flow, after operational losses and capital spending, will be negative to the tune of €1.2bn this year, enough to put another big dent in its cash pile and, surely, to prompt investors to demand yet more radical action. This could take a number of forms. Mr Elop could do a U-turn on his U-turn and opt for the Android operating system instead of building one from scratch. This seems unlikely given how much he has riding on the Microsoft deal and, in any case, might not suffice to turn round Nokia's fortunes. Nokia could, instead, be taken over, or broken up. Microsoft could convert its partnership into a fuller embrace. Samsung, keen to get its hands on Nokia's valuable patents, is also a contender. Although many of the patents are tied into cross-licensing agreements with other industry players, estimates of their standalone value suggest they could be a prize worth fighting for. In the early 1990s, Jorma Ollila pulled Nokia back from the brink by focusing on the company's small mobile handset division. By 1996, it was the biggest handset maker in the world. Twelve years later, not only has Nokia lost that crown but investors should be questioning whether another resurrection is possible.