The restructuring and job cuts mark another way of Microsoft undoing a portion of its 2014 acquisition of Nokia’s phone business and refocusing its efforts in the mobile sphere.
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The actions associated with today’s announcement are expected to be substantially complete by the end of the calendar year and fully completed by July 2017, the end of the company’s next fiscal year.
This move follows the sale last week by Microsoft of its Nokia feature phone business to FIH Mobile and HMD Global for 0 million.
While Microsoft continues to offer Windows 10 as a free upgrade for Windows 7 and 8.1 until July 29, not everyone is happy about the way the company has been encouraging users to take advantage of that offer – and in China, criticism has been rapidly growing over its increasingly aggressive approach.
“We are focusing our phone efforts where we have differentiation – with enterprises that value security, manageability and our Continuum capability, and consumers who value the same”, said Satya Nadella, Chief Executive Officer of Microsoft.
“We will continue to innovate across devices and on our cloud services across all mobile platforms”, he adds.
Global market share of Windows smartphones fell below 1 percent in the first quarter of 2016, according to research firm Gartner. That compares with Android’s 84 per cent and 15 per cent for Apple’s iOS.
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. “With Windows 10, it was finally in a position to offer that platform”.
Microsoft Corp. has all but abandoned the smartphone game.
When Nadella stepped into the helm two years ago, he inherited division over the company’s strategy, people familiar with the matter have said.
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As a result, Nokia and Microsoft have slashed thousands of Finnish jobs over the past decade, and the lack of substitute jobs is the main reason for the country’s current economic stagnation.
