Siemens has said it is to cut 7,000 more jobs at its telecoms divisions, with almost half the posts going in Germany.

The move means the company has slashed almost 15,000 jobs in total at the business this year.

Siemens had already said that it planned to reorganise its fixed-line Information and Communication Networks (ICN) business.

The company said that it aimed to close half of ICN's factories worldwide, and it expected to make savings of at least two billion euros (�1.2bn) from the measures.

ICN, which has 53,000 workers, is responsible for 5,000 of the job losses, while the Information and Communications Mobile (ICM) unit is losing 2,000.

it is not yet clear exactly where the knife will fall. The details will have to wait until after discussions with Siemens' employee councils, a spokesman said.

Industry suffers

Siemens increased the pace of reform after it reported a loss for the third quarter of this year, and warned its full-year figures would be worse than expected.

Like many other companies in the telecoms business, it has suffered from the slowdown which has hit the industry.

Telecoms equipment companies around the world have been shedding jobs - including Lucent Technologies in the US, Canada's Nortel Networks, France's Alcatel and Marconi in the UK.

Earlier this year Siemens had already said it was to cut 5,000 jobs at its ICN division - which makes switching systems and other telecoms infrastructure equipment.

ICM has already cut 2,600 jobs as part of a 400m euro cost-cutting programme.

But the company said more cuts were now needed.

"We have launched a programme of cost cutting and profit improvement with a target of 2bn euros (�1.2bn) in savings and positive earnings effects," Thomas Ganswindt, president of the ICN unit, said in a statement.

"We will achieve this by focusing on our customers and our product offerings as well as by concentrating on our traditional strengths."

Siemens' mobile phone business has also been under pressure, as European markets reach saturation point.