NEC under pressure cuts jobs Japanese electronics firm NEC is to layoff nearly 10 percent of its workers. The 10,000 jobs will be cut to try to reduce costs as competition from foreign rivals, including Apple in areas like smartphones, pushes NEC deep into the red. It warned it would post a net loss of the equivalent of just under one billion euros for the year up to the end of March. Previously it had forecast a small profit for the year. NEC also slashed its projection for annual mobile phone sales by nearly a quarter to five million phones and said most of the job cuts will be in its mobile phone business. At a news conference in Tokyo, company President Nobuhiro Endo said the cuts will start from the end of March and should be completed by the end of September with around 7,000 of the layoffs in Japan. More about: Information society technology, Japan, Japanese economy, Jobs, Telecommunication