Microsoft Writes Off $7.6 Billion on Nokia

Most of the jobs are within its smartphone hardware business.

Quoting “sources familiar with Microsoft’s plans”, The Verge on Monday reported that a market-ready build of Windows 10 is likely to be completed later this week.

“We are moving from a strategy to grow a standalone phone business to a strategy to grow and create a vibrant Windows ecosystem including our first-party device family,”. We believe that Microsoft can leverage these existing ties with its enterprise clients to sell more apps, services and solutions based on its smartphone offering. At the end of the first quarter of 2015, Windows devices held a 2.5 percent worldwide market share, according to Gartner. In an email to the employees, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella discussed several points including firms’ narrowed focus on three particular verticals – Phones, Mapping and Advertising.

With last week’s write down of .6 billion, Microsoft has finished the chapter of its corporate career marked “Nokia”, and arguably the book titled “Windows Phone”.

Earlier this week, Microsoft announced that it would be laying off around 7,800 people-all in the smartphone sector which Microsoft purchased from Nokia a year ago.

It’s absolutely no secret that the Windows phone has not been doing very well. “The issue for me was always, if Microsoft owns Nokia, why would others want to make Windows phones?”

Microsoft has announced the release of an updated build for its Windows 10 Mobile Insider Preview. 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.

Jan Dawson, chief analyst with Jackdaw Research, said that Microsoft pretty much is the Windows Phone industry, and any pullback is tantamount to waving the white flag. These apps are supposed to work across platforms (desktops, tablets and phones) with little tweaking. Once there, then click the word “Windows” five times, this will allow you to enter the retail demo code. That may be crucial to convincing shoppers to choose a Windows Phone over an iPhone or one of the many phones running Google’s Android.

Nokia – a name once feared by all its competitors is today making the news once again (is it for one last time?).