MONTE CARLO -- Nokia officials acknowledged that the company will be
eliminating 450 jobs in the process of streamlining its operations to
focus more on its services strategy and work more closely with third
parties.
Among the announcements that surfaced at the Nokia Developer Summit
2009 here came word that the cell phone giant plans to focus the
strategy of its services unit to create a better, more simplified user
experience across its services and to open up deeper and greater
opportunities for third parties. Further, Nokia will focus investments
on fewer initiatives and increase the use of common enablers across
certain services, company officials said.
"The planned changes are aimed at improving and simplifying the user
experience of Nokia services, increasing opportunities for third party
developers and other partners to create compelling services, and
accelerating the development of a common platform for Nokia's different
service offerings," said Niklas Savander, executive vice president,
Services, Nokia, in a statement.
As part of the announced changes, all mobile games will now become
available through the Ovi Store, in addition to through their existing
channels. "We believe this will create a better experience for Nokia's
millions of customers and spur opportunities for game developers,"
Savander said.
Thought developers are currently building applications for the
platform, the Nokia Ovi Store, which is Nokia's application marketplace
akin to the Apple App Store for iPhone applications, will not
officially launch until May. Nokia officials had initially indicated it
could launch as early as late April at its developer conference.
Meanwhile, Nokia officials said the company will add a variety of
third-party partners, such as other image and social networking sites,
to the image capture and sharing features on its devices. This move is
aimed at enhancing the Nokia device experience for those customers who
actively use third party services. And, as a result, many of these
changes will also help Nokia to realize cost-efficiencies in a number
of areas, thus enabling the streamlining effort.
The job cuts will come in the company's internal IT and
Compatibility & Industry Collaboration activities in the Corporate
Development Office unit.
Enterprise Mobility News & Reviews 
