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Just a year after establishing a division dedicated to mobile advertising networks, Nokia has slashed half the UK-based unit's workforce, with the loss of about 30 jobs. The numbers may not be huge in the context of major vendors' cutback programs, but it is indicative of the gap, in the short term at least, between Nokia's dreams of turning into a web services giant, and the reality of keeping its conventional business ticking over through a downturn.

"As part of its ongoing business review, Nokia has decided that the Nokia Interactive Advertising division should refocus its ad sales and other activities solely on Nokia services, together with some major third party publishers," Nokia said in a statement. This suggests that, though the giant's plans to evolve towards a full-blown mobile internet business, spanning non-Nokia platforms, may be intact for the medium term, in 2009 to 2010 at least, the firm will retrench to a simpler model focused on its own brands.

Nokia set up its mobile ad group at Mobile World Congress last year, and has made several moves since to bolster its activities and try to rival Google in terms of revenues and partnerships in this field. The Nokia Media Network has added a growing band of publishers and operators, including Sprint and India's Bharti Airtel, plus Reuters, Telegraph Media Group UK and International Herald Tribune.

The Network aims to allow advertisers to target consumers on the pages of premium mobile web sites associated with publishers, operator partners and Nokia's own Ovi internet services. The vendor says click-through rates on the network average 10%, which is very high for the online ad sector. Nokia also acquired US-based mobile ad specialist Enpocket last year.

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