Nokia will lay off 1800 employees, make Symbian apps compatible with MeeGo from now on

Nokia's Q3 results are out, and it seems like business as usual at Nokia (at least in the last three years) - a lot of devices sold, single digit profit margins. The average selling price of a Nokia mobile phone has been EUR 42 ($57), compared to EUR 136 ($186) for its smartphones and mobile computers, which are taking more and more share in Nokia's sales, affecting profits positively. The operating profit in its Devices&Services division was up 26%, compared to the second quarter of this year.

Recognizing what needs to be done at Nokia, and fast, the new management is stepping up the reorganization efforts by laying off 1800 redundant employees out of the roughly 65000 employed outside of its Nokia Siemens networking division. The layoffs and restructuring will have one sole aim - listening to people's needs and reacting accordingly. Nokia will speed up product launch, focus on the development and integration of the Ovi services, and introduce Qt (pronounced "cute") as a joint development platform for both Symbian and MeeGo. This will ensure that applications written for Symbian^3 from now on, will be compatible with both platforms for the foreseeable future.

Moreover, perhaps the greatest news for Nokia N8 owners is that there will be just Symbian from now on. No ^3 or ^4 anymore - as soon as steps like changes to the user interface are ready, they will be rolled out to all phones, thus bringing incremental improvements faster, rather than waiting for a final, all-encompassing release. The common Qt development framework will be joined by full support of HTML5 for web content and applications as well. Nokia's CTO says in the video interview below that they are "doubling down efforts" on Symbian by introducing Qt and modern browser technologies to it.

All good news, derived from common sense. It seems that Nokia is quickly turning in the right direction, now all that is left is to see how many Nokia N8 devices it will sell in the fourth quarter, and how will those sales affect the Finns' profit margins, and developers' appetite to write applications for it.

source: Nokia