Mobile maker Nokia is to slash 7,000 jobs as part of a plan to reduce annual costs by a billion euros.
4,000 of the staff are located at Nokia offers in Finland, Denmark and the UK with an additional 3,000 staff to be outsourced to Accenture.
The firm's Symbian software development activities will be entirely moved to the outsourcing arrangement, according to a Reuters report, raising the prospect of Nokia's software development team focuses exclusively on Windows Phone 7.
The job losses are the heaviest experienced by the world number one handset maker in 20 years and amounts to nearly 40 per cent of the firm's research and development staff.
Nokia is hoping the partnership with Microsoft will allow it to compete in the burgeoning smartphone market where it so far has struggled against rivals Apple and Google.
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