Whether you put the blame on Apple, Android or the Blackberry, Nokia is having a tough time. The Finnish mobile device giant will axe 7,000 jobs worldwide in a combination of layoffs and outsourcing.

Nokia will transfer about 3,000 of its employees to Accenture in accordance with its plans to form a strategic collaboration with the global management consultancy. What’s more, Nokia will be reducing its own global workforce by about 4,000 employees by the end of 2012, with the majority of cuts in Denmark, Finland and the UK.

TechZone360.com has detailed Nokia’s struggles as of late, recently reporting that its global market share has dropped to below 30 percent for the first time in over a decade. With increased competition from rivals such as Apple and Google's Android, the company appears to be losing ground to its competition, reported the Associated Press. Nokia's net profit in January through March fell by five million euro to € 344 million ($499 million) from a year earlier. Revenue grew nine percent to € 10.40 billion, according to the company’s earnings report.

Competition is only getting stiffer for Nokia, particularly in the smartphone arena. Certainly, the company’s smartphone sales increased six percent at € 7 billion in the first quarter. And it sold 24 million smartphones, 13 percent more than in the same period in 2010. Be that as it may, the burgeoning popularity of Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Android platform and RIM’s Blackberry has eaten away at Nokia’s market share. In fact, the Finnish company’s market share for smartphone devices plunged to 24 percent from 39 percent a year earlier, according to Strategy Analytics.

Nokia also reported that its overall global market share fell — to 29 percent, from 33 percent a year earlier and 31 percent in the previous quarter. Nokia hasn't seen such low market share levels since the late 1990s.