Accenture completes Nokia buy

Global consultancy Accenture has completed its acquisition of Nokia’s professional services unit, a move which is set to extend the firm’s expertise in embedded software services for mobile devices.

Accenture first announced its move for the unit, which is responsible for responsible for providing engineering and support of the Symbian operating system to device manufacturers and service providers, around three months ago.

“The new team members from Nokia have the skills that will enable Accenture to offer even stronger support of the Symbian OS,” said Jean Laurent Poitou, managing director of Accenture’s Electronics & High Tech industry group.

“We also intend to use their skills to help players in the mobile solutions ecosystem address ever-more-demanding time-to-market and quality requirements in other mobile device environments such as Android and other Linux variants, Apple iPhone OS, RIM, and Windows Mobile.”

Accenture said the move would complement and enhance its existing services and help it both reduce development costs and time to market while improving the quality and functionality of products.

The news services Accenture will be able to offer with the buy include advanced engineering and technical support; error diagnosis and fixing; device performance optimisation solutions; and program management services.

Accenture said it will also now be able to deliver an “end-to-end testing framework consisting of remote, simulator-based and automated testing”.