In the past two years, the company has laid off a massive number of employees, most of whom were related to its phone business and Nokia specifically.
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Microsoft anticipates that up to 1,350 job cuts will be at Microsoft Mobile Oy in Finland.
Just last week, Microsoft said it was selling its feature phone business for $350 million.
“The writing has been on the wall for some time about Microsoft’s remaining smartphone operations in Finland”, said Ben Wood from the CCS Insight consultancy. The next round of job cuts came previous year, when Microsoft announced an additional 7,800 staff cuts and took a $7.6 billion United States dollars writedown on the acquisition.
“So, Microsoft will continue to support smartphone licensees – including Alcatel, Acer and HP – for as long as it can”.
“When you look at their inability to make real headway against Apple’s iOS or Google’s Android operating systems in the marketplace, this was struggling to gain share”, said Edward Jones analyst Josh Olson of Microsoft’s phone business, referring to Apple’s (AAPL) and Alphabet’s (GOOGL) mobile systems.
The move comes just two years after the USA company paid $7.2bn for Nokia’s handset business.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that the company will now focus its phone efforts where it can differentiate itself from competitors, namely with consumers and enterprises that value security, manageability and the company’s Continuum capability that turns a smartphone running Windows 10 into a PC.
But one expert said he still believed it still had plans for new handsets.
From almost the beginning, Microsoft’s acquisition of Nokia’s mobile division was a bloody one: Less than three months after the Redmond, Wash. -based tech giant’s initial purchase, 12,500 employees – a full 50 per cent of the 25,000 who had transferred from Nokia to Microsoft – were let go.
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In fact, according to comScore, Microsoft’s share of the U.S. smartphone market is a paltry 2.7%. But he speculated that Microsoft’s reputation among consumers might finally be coming home to roost. “Their abusive way of dealing with the marketplace shows they don’t really understand the business environment. However as time passes, and customers have more choices, Microsoft may continue to lose market share”.
