New Gadget 2011

After the announcement of the partnership between Nokia and Microsoft this morning workers voiced their concern with the deal by walking out of Nokia facilities. It is believed that as many as a thousand workers marched out today (or took the day off using flex time) so that the company would know that they don’t believe the partnership is in their best interest, even after CEO’ Stephen Elop’s startlingly frank “burning platform” memo earlier this week.

Many of the protestors work on the Symbian software so their jobs will be in jeopardy as Nokia begins to implement Windows Phone 7 on its handsets. Their future is not at all clear after today’s news–broad strokes have been painted but much of the logistics have yet to be revealed. Nokia will not work exclusively with the Windows Phone 7 operating system (and they will be customizing it) so jobs will be preserved but Symbian will no longer play the prominent role it once did at the company so job loss is inevitable.

No job reductions have been announced as of yet, but out of the 3000 people working at Nokia’s Tampere facility (which will be closed down) over half of them work on Symbian. We’ve heard in other reports that cuts in headcount will be substantial.

Update: I’ve received word from Nokia with some clarification on the news above. The statement goes:

I read the story above, and just wanted to flag that while Elop mentioned reductions today, we haven’t announced any impact on personnel or specific sites. The translation of the original story in Finnish is incorrect – it doesn’t say that the Tampere facility will be closing.

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