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Nokia changes strategy on Symbian development
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Friday, October 22, 2010
On the heels of reporting a Q3 revenue increase, Nokia today announced it will cut 1800 employees globally as it works to simplify operations in product creation in its Symbian smartphone organization, as well as its services organization and certain corporate functions.
As to its Symbian changes, Nokia said it will expand the use of common tools for application development, streamline software development, and simplify and consolidate operations, among other efforts. With the changes, Nokia aims to increase its competitiveness and support building an attractive and sustainable platform for application developers across both the Symbian and MeeGo platforms.
Nokia will do so through a sole focus on Qt framework and support for HTML5, the company said, noting that it will develop its own future applications using Qt. Nokia further said that planned and future improvements in Symbian will be developed in Qt and will be compatible with the existing Symbian 3 platform release.
The changes are not unwarranted. Nokia's handsets and the Symbian operating system have been feeling heat from competitors, including Apple's iPhone and Android-based devices, in recent quarters as popularity of such devices grows.
In its Q3 report, Nokia showed total mobile device volumes of 110.4 million units, up 2% year-on-year and down 1% sequentially. Nokia converged mobile device (smartphone and mobile computer) volumes of 26.5 million units, were up 61% year-on-year and 10% sequentially. Nokia mobile device ASP (average selling prices) including services revenue was $90.50 (EUR 65), up from $89.12 (EUR 64) in Q3 2009 and $84.94 (EUR 61) in Q2.
Nokia is also making changes in its services organization. Instead of distinct end-to-end service lines, the services organization will be focused on delivering "an integrated Ovi experience across our full range of devices," the company said.
Nokia is further streamlining certain corporate functions and corporate research activities. The company did not detail those changes.
"The aim [of the changes] is to accelerate the company's transformation towards a leading mobile solutions provider, and to do this we are simplifying and integrating operations within our product creation and corporate functions," Juha Äkräs, Nokia's executive vice president of human resources, said in a statement.
Nokia did not disclose which of its locations the downsizing would impact. The company had 123,553 employees at the end of 2009.
For Q3, Nokia reported total revenue of about $14.3 billion (EUR 10.3 billion), up 5% year-on-year and 3% sequentially. Operating profit of about $883 million (EUR 634 million) was down 14% year over year and down 4% sequentially.
"... Our company faces a remarkably disruptive time in the industry, with recent results demonstrating that we must reassess our role in and our approach to this industry," Stephen Elop, who took Nokia's CEO seat just five weeks ago, said in a statement. "Some of our most recent product launches illustrate that we have the talent, the capacity to innovate, and the resources necessary to lead through this period of disruption. We will make both the strategic and operational improvements necessary to ensure that we continue to delight our customers and deliver superior financial results to our shareholders."
By: DocMemory
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