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Finnish IT companies Flander and Ardites merge with Chinese Symbio Group

24/09/2009

Symbio is one of the world’s largest outsourced product development companies. It provides software product engineering and product co-creation solutions across the entire product lifecycle, from ideation and development to user experience, testing and scaling. Flander specializes in mobile and embedded software development, and Ardites in user experience technologies.

The companies’ joint turnover in 2008 was more than EUR 50 million and Symbio will now employ 1400 IT professionals in Europe, Asia and the United States.

“Markets and technologies are converging and disrupting industries, while creating new opportunities for businesses. That’s why Symbio was formed, to deliver innovation, expertise and cost-effective execution on a global scale,” said Jacob Hsu, CEO of Symbio in a press statement. Symbio’s clients include Nokia, Vaisala, China Mobile, IBM and Microsoft. 

“The merger delivers the scale, resources and domain expertise needed to meet the rising demand for outsourced product development,” says Markus Suomi, President and COO of Symbio, in a press statement. “With our ability to manage the full product lifecycle, we provide a truly global OPD environment for our enterprise clients who seek premier talent, unique strategic and vertical-specific expertise, a richer user experience and very cost-effective execution.

Symbio now has three global headquarters located in Beijing, San Jose, and Tampere, as well as seven R&D centers in Finland and Sweden and five offshore development centers in mainland China, Taiwan, and Bangladesh.