Today just after publishing Q3 2010 financial results Nokia issued two more press releases. Announcing  reduction of about 1,800 employees globally to increase its responsiveness to consumer demands & reduce time to market, And also to bring more focus on Qt and  HTML5 support  for  both Symbian and MeeGo platforms.

Bits from the press release:

“Changes impacting personnel are always difficult. We are committed to managing these changes in a way that reflect Nokia’s values, and will support affected employees with alternative solutions, such as helping them find new positions within the company,” says Juha Äkräs, Executive Vice President, Human Resources. “The announcement today is the result of careful evaluation and planning; the plans have now been reviewed and endorsed by the new management. The aim is to accelerate the company’s transformation towards a leading mobile solutions provider, and to do this we are simplifying and integrating operations within our product creation and corporate functions.”

Moreover, Nokia is dropping Symbian version numbers, this mean there will be no more  Symbian^3 and Symbian^4 nomenclature, instead a continuous evolution model of OS updates is planned.  So user will be able to upgrade their Symbian device to newer version, when it comes out.

“One benefit of this simplified approach is that planned and future improvements in Symbian will be developed in Qt and will be compatible with the existing Symbian^3 platform release.  This means that Nokia’s continued commitment to develop the Symbian platform will benefit not only future users of Symbian-based products, but will result in updates and upgrades for existing Symbian^3 users.  The resulting change to a model of continuous evolution replaces the previous release-based model.    Nokia will no longer refer to Symbian^3 or Symbian^4.  The benefit to consumers will be a constant improvement in the experience of their Symbian-based Nokia products.”

Rich Green, CTO of Nokia Says:

“We’re making strategic technology decisions that will accelerate our ability to offer the strongest possible opportunity for developers and the richest possible experience for consumers.  For developers, it will open up a huge installed customer base for their applications.  For consumers, it means a more compelling engagement with their Nokia product in terms of access to the best applications in the marketplace and a constantly improving product experience.  We firmly believe that the choices we have made will not only mean significant opportunity and success for our developer partners, but for Nokia as well.”

For more information about Qt application development framework including Qt Quick and HTML5 support go to qt.nokia.com/qtquick and qt.nokia.com/HTML5.