LONDON — Nokia has agreed to sell its Symbian Professional Services unit, which is responsible for Symbian OS customer engineering and customer support, to Accenture. The price was not disclosed.

The unit provides engineering consulting and product development services on a global basis to mobile phone manufacturers, as well as chip manufacturers and mobile operators.

Services provided by the Symbian Professional Services teams include advanced technical support, techniques for enhancing performance, memory, and power, advanced error diagnosis and repair, and turnkey software development services that can be used in a range of technical environments.

Approximately 165 people will transfer to Accenture as a result of the agreement. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close by the end of third quarter 2009.

Last year Nokia announced is was to acquire the part of Symbian it did not own and transfer the operating system for free to the open source community.

Related links and articles:

Shake-up seen for smartphone OS market

Symbian outlines schedule for OS releases

Seven things you need to know about Nokia-Symbian deal