Mobile phone producer Nokia said it will lay off more than 450 employees globally following plans to further streamline its internal operations.
“Altogether, approximately 450 employees globally will be impacted by the plans announced today. Where applicable, Nokia will start consultations with employee representatives about these plans. All of these measures are part of Nokia’s previously announced plans to adjust its business operations and cost base in accordance with market demand and to safeguard future competitiveness. Nokia continues to seek savings in operational expenses, looking at all areas and activities across the company,” the company said.
Meanwhile, Nokia said it was, through its service unit, focusing on strategies to create a better, more simplified user experience across its services and to open up deeper and greater opportunities for third parties.
“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.
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 added.
In addition, Nokia 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.
As a result, many of these changes will also help Nokia to realize cost-efficiencies in a number of areas and will thus streamline operations in many of its Services entities, Savander said.
