Microsoft previously decided to enter the smartphone market and then built the Microsoft Mobile unit in Finland. Now, the company could no longer hold their smartphone line of business and has announced that it's going to initiate job cuts of up to 1,850 employees over the next year. Majority of the job lay-offs will be located in Finland, in the company's Microsofft Mobile unit.
However, the upcoming job cuts is minimal compared to the tens of thousands of jobs the company dealt with in the past two years, as told by CNN. The company's announcement in PR News Wire details CEO Satya Nadella's explanation about slashing over 25,000 jobs in the last couple of years. The company's Nokia division and smartphone hardware lines needed to be halted. Nokia has been struggling to penetrate the mobile phone business since 2013 and has already racked up over $6 billion as it tries to occupy the smart phone arena. Nokia phones are one of the fewest smartphones that embraced the Microsoft Windows 10 OS.
Microsoft said this latest round of restructuring and job losses will cost the company $950 million, with $200 million going towards severance payments.
It is not yet stated as to when Microsoft will begin laying off employees but the tech company has already started to sell its lines of businesses.
However, not everyone will be part of the job cuts. Around 4,500 employees will be transferred from Microsoft to FIH Mobile - part of the deal the company made when they sold their feature phones division.
Microsoft has decided to finally hammer the nail on Nokia phones. The company has decided to remain steadfast in pursuing their Windows strategy: 1. To continue building universal apps, 2. Continue to update Lumia and partner phone devices while taking care of their customers and 3. Continue to stay firm on pursuing innovations across Windows devices.
