The latest move follows job cuts of up to 7,800 past year, again largely affecting the phone hardware division formed when Microsoft acquired Nokia’s handset business in 2013.
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The American tech company is cutting almost 2,000 jobs, it announced Wednesday, including 1,350 from Finland as it ceases phone design and production in the country. Last week, Microsoft sold off the feature phone business of Nokia to Foxconn for 0 million.
These latest job cuts mean that most of the former Nokia employees will no longer be at Microsoft.
“The loss of 1,850 jobs is no small matter, and it is a sad denouement for the story of the Finnish mobile phone powerhouse that was a groundbreaking and innovative player in its prime”.
The cuts will cost Microsoft $950m (£648m) in impairment and restructuring charges, around $200m of which will go on staff’s severance payments. It also reduced the number of smartphones it offered and took a $7.6 billion accounting charge, writing off almost the entire value of the Nokia deal. Mr Ballmer had faced significant pushback internally for his plan to acquire Nokia and Mr Nadella was initially against the move into smartphones. In February, when Nadella became the CEO the shares of Microsoft were around $34.20.
Microsoft’s Lumia and Windows Phone strategy has failed as both sales and Windows Phone market share have declined since the tech giant’s mobile restructuring previous year. Most job cuts will occur by the end of 2016. Nadella has been pushing Microsoft to make its flagship Windows operating system and other popular software programs work on a variety of devices.
It’s been widely speculated Microsoft could build on the success of its convertible Surface tablets and leverage that product line to create a high-end Surface phone in the next year.
Last July Satya said that Microsoft would reduce the number of Windows Phone models, too.
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According to Kantar Worldpanel, Windows accounts for 6.2 percent of the United Kingdom smartphone market and 4.9 percent of sales in Europe’s five biggest countries.
