Microsoft To Cut 2,100 More Jobs
Following 13,000 redundancies announced over the summer, Microsoft is planning more cuts as it shifts its focus
Microsoft has confirmed it is to eliminate another 2,100 jobs in a plan announced earlier this year to cut 18,000 positions, as the company shifts its focus to online services, mobile applications and devices.
The company said 747 of the jobs will be in the Seattle area, with the others coming from locations around the world.
‘Difficult but necessary’
Microsoft said in a statement that the cuts are “spread across many different business units, and many different countries”.
In a first round of cuts, the company shed 13,000 jobs in July, with 12,500 coming from the mobile handset business acquired from Nokia in April for $7.5 billion (£4.7bn).
At the time, chief executive Satya Nadella said in an email to staff that the cuts were “difficult but necessary” in order to refocus Microsoft in a new direction.
“The first step to building the right organisation for our ambitions is to realign our workforce,” he said.
Microsoft said it would take a charge of between $1.1bn and $1.6bn for costs related to the redundancies, which account for about 14 percent of the 127,000 full-time staff the company had as of mid-July, including 25,000 former Nokia employees.
More to come
Aside from the Nokia staff, the first round of cuts also affected the Operating Systems Group and most other groups across the company, according to reports. Microsoft also said at the time it would reduce its dependency on non-full time employees by 20 percent.
The 15,100 job cuts announced to date leave another 2,900 redundancies to be announced by July of next year.
Japan’s Toshiba announced separately it is to cut 900 positions as it restructures its PC business, with the changes including an exit from business-to-consumer sales in some regions.
Do you know all about Microsoft Windows Phone? Take our quiz.
