The world’s largest mobile-phone maker by volume said it will consolidate its research and product-development sites so that each has a clear role and mission, and expects to expand some sites and to contract or close others.

Nokia also said it plans to outsource all Symbian software activities and move about 3,000 employees to Accenture PLC. Accenture, meanwhile, will provide mobility software services to Nokia for future smartphones.

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For Sprint, which is suffering from declining revenue and a thinning subscriber base, the move is a quick-and-dirty way of cutting costs and freeing up resources to focus on innovation and remedying the real and perceived issues with its services.

“This is about improving our customer experience,” Steve Elfman, head of Sprint’s network operations, said during a conference call this morning. “While we get the benefit of Ericsson’s expertise…we can focus our attention on bringing great devices, great services, great applications to them….We’ll benefit from the current scale and efficiency and expertise of Ericsson, and this will keep improving over time.”