Microsoft plans major job cuts: NYT

The latest job cuts are in addition to the 18,000 jobs that Microsoft said it planned to cut a year ago, the newspaper said, citing sources familiar with the matter. At the end of March 2015 it was reported Microsoft has more than 118000 employees, therefore it may come as no surprise the company is undergoing massive firings.

Microsoft’s acquisition of Nokia’s hardware business has been a failure and Microsoft may acknowledge as much by announcing a write off of its multi-billion dollar investment in that purchase.

After last year’s announcement of job cuts, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella emailed employees, trying to reassure them about the changes to come. Nadella also warned that Microsoft would need to “make some tough choices in areas where things are not working and solve hard problems in ways that drive customer value”.

Last month Microsoft sold its display ad business to AOL which shows the company is on the verge of some very major changes and is letting go of commodities.

Microsoft’s strengths are its continuing dominance in the PC operating system business but PC sales worldwide are lacking any growth impacting Microsoft’s growth prospects.

The company is also stumbling in smartphones area since it acquired Nokia’s handset business.

The company told The ex- top boss at phone-maker Nokia, Stephen Elop and 3 high-level executives are going to leave Microsoft this year.

However, Microsoft will not exit the smartphone business over importance of mobile devices in the technology business. Microsoft was also slow to launch Android and iOS versions of its hit Office software which allowed alternatives such as Evernote to grow and smartphone users are less dependent on Microsoft software than desktop users.