Nokia and Accenture have finalized an agreement allowing the former to outsource its Symbian software development and support activities to Accenture. Plans of the agreement were first announced on April 27, 2011.
Under the agreement, Accenture will provide Symbian-based software development and support services to Nokia through to 2016. The deal will also see about 2,800 Nokia employees working from China, Finland, India, UK and US, being transferred to Accenture at closing, expected to take place in the early part of October, 2011.
“We look forward to partnering with Nokia as they continue to support Symbian and transition to the Windows Phone ecosystem. The highly skilled group of technologists and engineers transferring to Accenture will complement our current mobility skills and enhance the breadth, depth and scale of our capabilities, allowing us to meet the growing global demand for mobility services across many industries,” said Marty Cole, chief executive, Accenture Communications and High Tech group in a press release.
The agreement calls for Accenture to support and further develop Nokia’s Symbian platform and to become the preferred supplier to Nokia on their transition to Windows Phone. Accenture will seek opportunities to leverage transferring employee skills and capabilities to provide mobility software, business and operational services around the Windows Phone platform to Nokia and other ecosystem participants. Accenture will also seek to retrain and redeploy transferred employees.
“Our collaboration with Accenture allows us to meet our ongoing commitment to support our Symbian smartphone customers and continue to leverage the talent that has the deepest experience on the platform. As we move our primary smartphone platform to Windows Phone, we will look to explore potential opportunities to tap this talent pool as they develop and expand their knowledge and capabilities beyond Symbian,” said Jo Harlow, Nokia’s executive vice president for Smart Devices.
Accenture will also work with Avanade, a technology service company that is majority-owned by Accenture and focuses on Microsoft technologies, to provide further services to Nokia.
Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with more than 215,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. The company generated net revenues of US $ 21.6 billion for the fiscal year ended August 31, 2010. The Accenture Mobility Services group offers five mobility services including consulting, software services (applications), software services (devices and platforms), managed services, and business integration services.
These are designed to help organizations embrace business to employee (B2E), business to consumer (B2C), business to business (B2B) and machine to machine (M2M) business opportunities. Accenture offers mobility and embedded software services across various industries and platforms, including Symbian, WinMo (Microsoft Windows Mobile), Windows Phone, Android(TM), Blackberry, iPhone, Java(TM), Linux, Meego.
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