Microsoft Corp. plans to cut 1,850 jobs as part of CEO Satya Nadella’s strategy to pare back the company’s operations in the smartphone market. Further, the company would also incur impairment & restructuring charge of $950m, including $200m for severance payments.
Of the total job cuts announced, 1,350 jobs are attributed to its operations in Finland, which were the base of the handset business it acquired from Nokia Oyj in 2014. The company has already written off most of the $9.5bn of the Nokia deal led by his predecessor Steve Ballmer.
The company expects to complete most of the announced actions by the end of 2016 with further details to be released during its fourth-quarter earnings in July 2016.
Microsoft has struggled to compete with firms like Apple and android-phone manufacturers. Windows phones had less than 1% of the global smartphone market in the first quarter of 2016, according to Gartner Inc. That compares with Android’s 84% and 15% for Apple’s iOS.
Source: Bloomberg
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