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.