Wipro buys Nokia Mobile Broadcast Solutions unit

Wipro Technologies has acquired the enterprise mobile TV unit from the cellular handset maker Nokia for an undisclosed sum. Nokia’s Mobile Broadcast Solutions unit has around 40 employees developing software and hardware to enhance mobile TV technology on mobile phones to locate and access data through a broadcasting network.

The Nokia Mobile Broadcast Solutions is a DVB-H (digital video broadcast – handheld) server platform for mobile TV services.

Apart from offering mobile TV services, The Nokia Mobile Broadcast Solutions unit,  also offered training, implementation, integration, maintenance, and support services to facilitate commercial mobile TV services offered to its customers.

“We wanted to focus on the consumer side of things, the mobile TV client in the devices, rather than on the business-to-business side,” said a Nokia spokesperson.

The Nokia TV unit clientele included KPN, a mobile TV service provider in Europe, and MiTV Corporation Sdn Bhd in Malaysia.

This is the second time Wipro has acquired assets from Nokia. In October 2007, Wipro Technologies acquired Nokia Siemens Networks’ Berlin-based R&D team. Reports say that around 58 employees of Nokia Siemens Networks were moved to Wipro Technologies.

Mobile broadcasting, once considered a promising technology feature, has failed to generate any kind of demand.

The selling of the unit comes as a cost-cutting measure after Nokia has incurred a 27% dip in sales, to EUR 9.3 billion, compared with EUR 12.7 billion, in the first quarter 2008.

It has been implementing cost-cutting measures that include layoffs and divesting in certain segments.