Nokia Cuts Jobs and Outsources Symbian Development to Accenture

Nokia has confirmed that it will cut 4,000 jobs related to research and development as well as an additional 3,000 via outsourcing contract to outsourcing firm Accenture, moving the internal Symbian development team to the firm in an attempt to save US$1.46 billion in R&D costs by 2013. The new deal is a further expansion of its move away from Symbian as it begins its planned transition to Windows Phone 7 for its smartphone platform later this year.

While the move of the Symbian team to Accenture is considered by many to be confusing, the firm does specialize in such contract work. However, no mention was made of the SYMBEOSE deal signed by Nokia late last year with assistance provided by the European Union to turn Symbian into the pan European open source smart phone platform, which was subsequently abandoned. This, along with the closure of the Symbian Foundation led to Nokia closing Symbian source and relicensing Symbian under a non-free, non-GPL commercial license earlier this year.