Coming off a challenged fourth quarter in which its market share fell 10%, Nokia today announced plans to cut 1,700 jobs globally as consumer demand for its mobile devices wanes. As part of the cuts, which will come from sales, marketing and technology management, Nokia will trim the “marketing and other activities no longer integral following the Symbian acquisition.” These cuts are also related to Nokia’s support for Symbian/S60, which will all be folded into the new Symbian Foundation.
Nokia stressed that the cutbacks are part of Nokia’s previously announced plans to adjust business operations and cost base in accordance with market demand and to safeguard future competitiveness. The manufacturer said it will continue to evaluate all areas of its business.
The Symbian Foundation this week finally outlined its timeframe for rolling out the new open-source version of the Symbian platform. The first devices based on it will launch before the year’s end, according to David Wood, Symbian’s executive vice president of research. Writing on the Foundation’s blog, he said that each individual platform release will follow a path of gradual development with the first release, Symbian^2, functionally complete by the middle of the year and final by the end of the year. On this ambitious schedule, the new software releases will be coming faster than most of Symbian’s competitors.