Microsoft to lay off up to 7800

Those “costs” have finally caught up to Microsoft and the new CEO, Satya Nadella, when he proclaimed a total rethinking of their phone strategy – he announced that they would be writing off $7.6 billion…nearly the entire amount of the Nokia acquisition, as well as cutting up to 7,800 jobs.

“We believe Nadella’s proactive approach at cleaning up the Nokia acquisition is a positive “tipping of the hand” around Microsoft’s future focus on software (versus hardware) as the company heads into a pivotal year, with Windows 10 front and center as a major product catalyst”, Ives said. We are moving from a strategy to grow a stand-alone phone business to a strategy to grow and create a vibrant Windows ecosystem that includes our first-party device family. However, we need to focus our phone efforts in the near term while driving reinvention.

Another rumor recently surfaced claiming Microsoft was coming up with inventive new ideas to compete with Android devices, subsequently settling on a front-facing LED flash for the device running Windows 10 Mobile straight out of the box. The ex- CEO of Nokia, Stephen Elop, left Microsoft surprisingly last month. As Windows 10 is still to reach RTM stage, Lenovo has worked with one of the preview builds – it’s possible to make out the desktop watermark in the screenshots – but everything should still be accurate.

The reports suggest that Microsoft is gearing up to make some serious inroads into the three categories: Business, Windows Operating System and its customers.

And speaking of older versions of Windows, Microsoft has had a tough time retiring its previous versions. Statistically speaking, most people have never used a Windows Phone, prompting Re/Code’s Lauren Goode to write an article on “what it’s really like to use a Windows Phone”, an excellent read for the curious. A survey by IDC said Windows was expected to capture just 3.2 percent of the global smartphone market this year.

Microsoft has released an app aimed at fixing random reboot issues on Lumia devices. The move to unify all of these devices with a single operating system seems aimed at attracting interest from developers, who can build universal apps or port apps from iOS and Android. “Microsoft will have something very similar to where the Surface line is now”, he said. When he took over, Nokia still had over a 28-percent market share.