Microsoft to cut 7800 jobs as phone unit struggles Updated: 2015

Last July, the company said it would slash 18,000 positions in its biggest-ever layoff, most coming from the Nokia acquisition; that included staffers at Xbox Entertainment Studios, which Microsoft shuttered two years after its formation.

Microsoft: We told you earlier that the tech giant Microsoft is going with a major restructuring of its mobile devices business and that it would cut 7,800 jobs.

“Microsoft Corp. today announced plans to restructure the company’s phone hardware business to better focus and align resources, ” the Washington-based company said in a statement.

In an email sent to Microsoft employees, current chief executive Satya Nadella said Microsoft will not leave the mobile business, but it will no longer focus on the growth of that sector. “We expect that the reductions will take place over the next several months”. “Our reinvention will be centred on creating mobility of experiences across the entire device family including phones”.

The impairment charge will roughly be $7.6 billion in relation to the assets that are associated with all the acquisitions done with Nokia Devices and Service (NDS). While many of these cuts will come from its phone division and the “Windows and Device Group”, it’s not all doom and gloom for Windows Phone. The company has begun to streamline its efforts and focus on its core strengths, which includes the Microsoft Office software as well as cloud computing. Despite the promising features of Nokia’s Lumia product line and the Windows Phone operating system, Microsoft’s market share remained in low single digits – just over 3 percent this year – as consumers flocked to phones running Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android instead. Microsoft had about 118,000 employees worldwide at the end of March, according to its website, with about half in the United States. A new round of layoffs will eliminate 7,800 jobs, specifically in its struggling phone business. Also, Nadella announced plans to write off $7.6 billion related to its acquisition of Nokia.

Nadella said Microsoft’s search engine “Bing” will now power search and search advertising across the AOL portfolio of sites, in addition to the partnerships with Yahoo, Amazon and Apple.

A strategy where other mobile vendors would have a larger stake in the new Windows 10 Mobile, while focusing on the platform is one of the vision of Nadella.